They may be working from home, but 21 actors, filmmakers and other professionals have signed on to serve as jurors for the online-only 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
The Sundance Institute, the nonprofit arts group that puts on the festival every year, announced its slate of jurors Friday — two days after it announced that it was canceling its in-person Utah screenings and events because of the surge in COVID-19 cases both in the state and nationwide.
Sixteen of these people will decide the award-winning films in six juried categories, among the movies screening online starting Jan. 20. The winners will be announced on Jan. 28, and the winners will stream online during the festival’s final weekend, Jan. 29 and 30.
The five-member jury for the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, given to a movie that depicts science or technology, made their pick in advance. The institute announced in December that “After Yang,” a science-fiction drama by the director/writer/editor Kogonada, will receive the Sloan Prize.
Here are the members of the juries:
U.S. Dramatic Competition • Chelsea Barnard, producer (“C’mon, C’mon,” “Booksmart”) and former president of film for Annapurna Pictures; Marielle Heller, writer/director (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”); and Payman Maadi, Iranian-American actor, who starred in the Academy Award-winning “A Separation.”
U.S. Documentary Competition • Garrett Bradley, documentary director (“Time”) and the first Black American woman to win the Sundance jury’s directing prize; Joan Churchill, pioneer in experiential documentary; and Peter Nicks, cinematographer/director known for his trilogy of films about systems in Oakland, Calif. — “The Waiting Room,” “The Force” and “Homeroom.”
World Cinema Dramatic Competition • Andrew Haigh, British director (“Lean on Pete,” “45 Years”); Mohamed Hefzy, Egyptian screenwriter and producer (“Luxor,” “Sheikh Jackson”); and La Frances Hui, curator of film for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
World Cinema Documentary Competition • Emilie Bujès, artistic director of Visions Du Réel, International Film Festival Nyon in Switzerland; Patrick Gaspard, president/CEO of the Center for American Progress, and President Barack Obama’s ambassador to South Africa; and Dawn Porter, documentarian who directed “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” “The Way I See It” and other films.
Next • Joey Soloway — the creator of “Transparent” and “I Love Dick,” and the winner of Sundance’s 2013 Directing Award for “Afternoon Delight” — is the sole juror in this category.
Short Film Program Competition • Penelope Bartlett, director of programming for the Criterion Channel; Kevin Jerome Everson, who has made more than 200 films; and Blackhorse Lowe, a filmmaker from the Navajo Nation, most recently directing episodes of the FX series “Reservation Dogs.”
Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize • Dr. Heather Berlin, neuroscientist, clinical psychologist and associate clinical professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York; Dr. Mandë Holford, associate professor at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, an expert in venoms and venomous animals, and co-founder of the learning games company Killer Snails; Tenoch Huerta, Mexican actor/writer/producer who starred in “Narcos: Mexico,” “The Forever Purge” and other films; Lydia Dean Pilcher, writer/director/producer, most recently directing “A Call to Spy” and “Radium Girls”; and Shawn Snyder, a filmmaker whose 2018 debut “To Dust” won the Best New Director and Narrative Audience awards at the Tribeca Film Festival.
