NAME OF FESTIVAL: Sundance Film Festival
SINCE: 1978
WHERE: Park City, Utah, USA
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
The annual Sundance Film Festival, held in and around Park City, Utah, each January is widely considered the premier platform for American and international independent film. The Festival has introduced audiences to some of the most original stories of the last three decades including Reservoir Dogs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, American Splendor, An Inconvenient Truth, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Cove.
Sundance Film Festival
I ORIGINS, directed and written by Mike Cahill, has been awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and will receive a $20,000 cash award by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. I ORIGINS which premiered on Saturday at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival has been acquired by Fox Searchlight Pictures for release in the U.S. The film is scheduled to be released in 2014.
The ‘blackly comedic’ Irish drama CALVARY which screened Sunday in the Premieres section of the Sundance Film Festival was acquired by Fox Searchlight Pictures and scheduled to be released in the U.S. in 2014 . Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, CALVARY’s ensemble cast includes Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankolé, M. Emmet Walsh, Marie-Josée Croze, Domhnall Gleeson, David Wilmot, Pat Shortt, Gary Lydon, Killian Scott, Orla O’Rourke, Owen Sharpe and David McSavage. CALVARY was recently added to the lineup for the Berlin International Film Festival and is the opening night film for the 2014 Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.
Gillian Robespierre’s debut comedy OBVIOUS CHILD which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday has been snapped up by A24 for a planned 2014 theatrical release. OBVIOUS CHILD is described as an honest comedy about what happens when Brooklyn comedian Donna Stern gets dumped, fired, and pregnant just in time for the best/worst Valentine’s Day of her life.
The ‘existential drama’ I ORIGINS which premiered on Saturday at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival has been acquired by Fox Searchlight Pictures for release in the U.S. The film is scheduled to be released in 2014. Directed and written by Mike Cahill, I ORIGINS is his second feature following ANOTHER EARTH which Fox Searchlight acquired at Sundance in 2011. The film stars Michael Pitt, Brit Marling, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Steven Yeun and Archie Panjabi.
Zach Braff’s comedy film WISH I WAS HERE, was quickly acquired by Focus Features after its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend. WISH I WAS HERE is Braff’s follow-up to his indie breakout hit GARDEN STATE. WISH I WAS HERE was directed by Zach Braff from a screenplay he wrote with his brother, Adam; and stars Zach Braff along with Kate Hudson, Mandy Patinkin, Josh Gad, Ashley Greene, Joey King, Pierce Gagnon and the late James Avery. Braff made headlines when he announced that WISH I WAS HERE would be funded by the crowd-funding site Kickstarter.
Lynn Shelton’s LAGGIES starring Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Sam Rockwell which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, was acquired by A24 for U.S. release. A24 is planning a summer theatrical release for the film.
Just before its world debut at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, Pivot, the cable network from Participant Media and Univision News acquired the U.S. TV rights to ‘CESAR’S LAST FAST’ from Richard Ray Perez and Lorena Parlee. CESAR’S LAST FAST, the documentary about the famed labor organizer, will premiere simultaneously in English and Spanish on the two networks – Pivot and the Univision Network– respectively.
DINOSAUR 13, one of the opening night films of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival has been acquired by CNN Films and Lionsgate, and will be released theatrically, with a North American broadcast premiere on CNN/U.S. DINOSAUR 13 is a documentary by filmmaker Todd Miller, who followed the odyssey of paleontologist Peter Larson of South Dakota’s Black Hills Institute of Geological Research after his history-making find: a nearly intact 65 million year-old fossilized skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex, they named “Sue.”
Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA) has acquired this year’s 2014 Sundance Film Festival opening night feature film, WHIPLASH, starring J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller for worldwide distribution. Directed and written by Damien Chazelle (Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench), WHIPLASH is adapted from a short film that won Sundance’s jury award for fiction in 2013 (also written and directed by Chazelle).
The world premiere of U.S. Dramatic Competition film WHIPLASH directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Miles Teller, and J.K. Simmons kicked off the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on Thursday night. Whiplash, based on Chazelle’s 2013 Sundance Film Festival award-winning short film, open to rave reviews with Variety declaring “Miles Teller drums his heart out — and then some — in writer-director Damien Chazelle’s stellar career-starter, “Whiplash,” which demolishes the cliches of the musical-prodigy genre.”
Check out this amazing clip from the new film APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR set to premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR, written, directed by and starring Iranian American filmmaker Desiree Akhavan, Shirin is struggling to become an ideal Persian daughter, politically correct bisexual and hip young Brooklynite. She fails miserably in her attempt at all identities, and being without a cliché to hold onto can be a lonely experience. After being dumped by her girlfriend Maxine, Shirin faces an unimaginable task: trading the idyllic lesbian haven of Park Slope for a shared artist’s loft in Bushwick. Unable to let go of the memories of their excruciating highs and lows, the endearingly superficial narcissist finds herself plotting to win back her ex.
BOYHOOD by Richard Linklater, has been added to the program lineup for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and will premiere on Sunday, January 19, 2014, at the Eccles Theatre. The 2014 Festival takes place January 16 to 26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. With the addition of Boyhood, the 2014 Festival will present 121 feature-length films.