My first time attending Sundance in 1994 coincided with my first trip to the U.S. I made my way with a press badge and stayed in a cozy Bed & Breakfast on Main Street in what appeared to be a quiet little ski town.
Today, accommodations on Main Street are reserved for A-list celebrities and C-suite studio executives, and every other building is marked with a brand activation or pop-up of some kind. Back in ‘94, I was on the ground interviewing the likes of Naomi Campbell, Robert Redford and Brian Wilson. In ‘24, I traversed the festival with my team in celebration of our three films making their debut.
The people at Sundance this year were certainly the usual mix of studio executives, distributors, investors and lawyers, but I was pleasantly surprised by the high volume of extremely talented young people attending the festival to break through in their creative careers and leverage the festival as an opportunity to network. When I first came to Sundance, Abel Ferrara was revered as a “bad boy” in filmmaking, a standout voice in the industry who was truly taking chances. Today, there is an abundance of palpable excitement around fresh creative, technical, and conceptual approaches that are constantly setting a new "status quo" for craft within the independent filmmaking space. The slate of filmmaking talent also brings a refreshingly more diverse slate of perspectives to the table, reflecting a society and culture that is finally reckoning with the need for stories that are more representative of modern audiences.
While last year’s first post-pandemic in-person Sundance was marked by a bit of a snooze when it came to deal flow, this year’s titles were getting snatched up throughout the entire festival. There may not have been an overwhelming number of overnight bidding wars, but in the slate of three films that our studio worked on alone, all were acquired by the end of the festival. Presence, the captivating first-person perspective film from director Stephen Soderbergh, left critics, audiences and even the film’s actors on the edge of their seats during the premiere. It was sold to Neon in a competitive bidding process, which secured the worldwide rights for the film. The other films we worked on, including A Real Pain directed by Jesse Eisenberg, sold to Searchlight Pictures for $10 million hours after it premiered. I Saw the TV Glow arrived at Sundance with A24 already securing distribution rights for the Emma Stone-produced film.
While Sundance today may lack the “innocence” I experienced back in the 90s, the spirit of the festival remains intact. Over 30 years, the democratization of filmmaking technology has transformed the landscape of independent film, I believe, for the better.
Vico Sharabani is founder & chief creative officer at The-Artery
