Sixteen film professionals — directors, writers, producers and actors — have signed on to serve as jurors for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
The nonprofit Sundance Institute, which mounts the festival every January in Park City and Salt Lake City, announced the jury members Wednesday. The jurors will be selecting winners in five competition categories, representing U.S. and World Cinema films in the dramatic and documentary divisions, as well as the Next program.
Sundance also announced the five jurors who selected the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, given to a festival movie with a science or technology theme. The winner of that prize was announced in December: Sam and Andy Zuchero’s “Love Me,” a science-fiction romance starring Kristen Stewart and Stephen Yuen, which will screen in the U.S. Dramatic competition.
The festival runs in person Jan. 18-28, and on the Sundance online portal Jan. 25-28. The juries’ selected movies will screen in person and online Jan. 27-28.
Single ticket sales start Thursday, Jan. 11, at 10 a.m. Mountain time, on the festival’s website, festival.sundance.org.
The jury members are:
U.S. Dramatic • Director Debra Granik, whose films include “Winter’s Bone,” “Leave No Trace”; writer-illustrator Adrian Tomine, whose graphic novel “Shortcomings” was adapted into a movie that premiered at Sundance 2023; and Lena Waithe, the writer, producer and actor known for such work as “Master of None,” “The Chi” and “Queen & Slim.”
U.S. Documentary • Producer-writer Shane Boris, whose recent films include “Hollywoodgate,” “King Coal,” “Navalny” and “Fire of Love”; Nicole Newnham, who directed the documentary “The Disappearance of Shere Hite,” which premiered at Sundance 2023, and co-directed “Crip Camp”; and Rudy Valdez, who directed “The Sentence” (SFF ‘18, Audience Award winner), “Carlos” and the upcoming Disney+ series “Choir.”
World Cinema Dramatic • Jennifer Kent, Australian director of “The Babadook” and “The Nightingale”; Mira Nair, director of such films as “Mississippi Masala,” “Monsoon Wedding” and “The Namesake”; and Portuguese cinematographer Rui Poças, whose films inclue “O Fantasma” and “The Ornithologist.”
World Cinema Documentary • Mandy Chang, creative director of Fremantle’s documentary arm, Undeniable; Monica Hellström, producer of such documentaries as “Flee” and “A House Made of Splinters”; and Shaunak Sen, director of the Indian documentary “All That Breathes.”
Short Film Program • Chrstine Oh, producer of “Minari,” “Okja” and “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”; actor-writer-director Danny Pudi, best known for his roles in “Mythic Quest” and “Community”; and British director Charlotte Regan (“Scrapper,” SFF ‘23, Grand Jury Prize winner in World Cinema Dramatic).
Next • The one-person jury this year is writer-director Zal Batmanglij, known for his collaborations with actor-writer Brit Marling, including the films “Sound of My Voice” and “The East,” and the TV series “The OA” and the current FX whodunit “A Murder at the End of the World.”
Alfred P. Sloan Prize • Dr. Mandë Holford, a marine chemical biologist and founder of the games company Killer Snails LLC; Dr. Nia Imara, an astrophysicist and founding director of the nonprofit Onaketa; Matt Johnson, director of the 2023 movie “BlackBerry”; Theresa Park, producer of such movies as “Bones and All” and “After Yang” (which won the Sloan Prize in 2022); and Courtney Stephens, writer and director of nonfiction and experimental films, including “The American Sector.”
