Sundance 2024: Short Films, 40th Edition Celebration Screenings, Events

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Category: Entertainment News
Published on Wednesday, 13 December 2023 10:11
Written by A&E Contributing Editor

The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced the Short Films and 40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events that will be a part of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival programming. The festival will take place January 18–28, 2024.

With offerings scheduled for both in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, a selection of titles will also be available online nationwide from January 25–28, 2024.

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The festival will introduce new short films for 2024 across eight curated programs. Special 40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events are set for the second half of the festival and kick off on January 23, 2024, with a slate of retrospective programming that will bring alumni artists together for conversations and gatherings, while also allowing audiences to revisit iconic films from Sundance history through archive screenings followed by Q&As with members of the films.

In-Person Ticket Packages and Passes and Online Ticket Packages and Passes, including a special short films online pass, are currently on sale and single film tickets go on sale January 11 at 10 a.m. MT.

The 40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events will run from Tuesday, January 23 through Friday, January 26. The festival will debut brand-new 4K restorations of Napoleon Dynamite (20th anniversary) Go Fish (30th anniversary), Three Seasons (25th anniversary), and an extended version of DIG! (20th anniversary), featuring over 30 minutes of additional footage, titled DIG! XX. Also showing will be The Babadook and Pariah, and restorations of Mississippi Masala and The Times of Harvey Milk. 

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The upcoming Festival will also see the return of acclaimed artist alumni. Talks with notable alumni will take place, including a panel titled Power of Story: Four Decades of Taking Chances about the legacy of independent storytelling featuring Miguel Arteta, Richard Linklater, Dawn Porter, and Christine Vachon; a screening of seminal short films from Sundance's history hosted by Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass; and a workshop for emerging creators with Carlos López Estrada and others. Other special events include alumni social gatherings and a 40th Edition trivia night.

"As the 2024 Sundance Film Festival marks our milestone 40th edition, we are thrilled to announce the myriad ways we'll celebrate four decades of visionary storytelling and the emerging artists in this year's program," said Festival Director and Head of Public Programming Eugene Hernandez. "The 40th Edition Celebration Screenings will showcase films from Sundance's rich history, each having made an indelible impact on culture. Our outstanding Short Film program selection, chosen from more than 12,000 submissions, simultaneously welcomes the next generation of voices and storytellers to watch. In gathering some of the extraordinary artists who have been part of our history along with our community of emerging creators and audiences, we hope to demonstrate Sundance's role as the premier place for international discovery and the vitality of independent cinema."

"We are pleased to revisit some Festival history through our 40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events. These are a great complement to our new programming premiering across sections, and our curatorial team is looking forward to bringing the mix of offerings in the 2024 lineup to audiences," said Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming. "From the inception of the Festival, we've been huge supporters of short filmmaking and we're proud to carry that support into this 40th edition of the Festival as well."

"Selecting the shorts for the Festival Program every year is an exercise in taking the pulse of film culture, and the outlook is always bright," said Mike Plante, Senior Programmer, Short Film. "In our 40th year, the world of short films is more vibrant than ever. With so many ways to see and experience shorts now — at festivals and online through varied platforms — so many artists are coming to the art form and creating shorts that excite us, and short film fans, in new ways."

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The 53 Short Films for the 2024 lineup were selected from 12,098 submissions, the highest number on record. Of these submissions, 5,323 were from the U.S., and 6,799 were international. This upcoming year's Short Film program includes work from 22 countries.

Driven by innovation and experimentation, the Short Film program seeks out filmmaking's most original voices, exhibiting shorts across fiction, nonfiction, and animation, globally. From the start, the Institute has supported short filmmaking in all forms and styles, with alumni of the program including Andrea Arnold, Lake Bell, Damien Chazelle, Destin Daniel Cretton, Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass, Debra Granik, Rashaad Ernesto Green, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Sterlin Harjo, Todd Haynes, Nikyatu Jusu, Shaka King, Lynne Ramsay, Dee Rees, Charlotte Regan, A.V. Rockwell, Joey Soloway, Taika Waititi, and many others. The Sundance Institute champions short films globally and throughout the year, with select Festival shorts presented as a traveling program at theaters in the U.S, Canada, Europe, and more.

A complete list of film previewing at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival can be seen here.

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The Sundance Film Festival®
The Sundance Film Festival, a program of the nonprofit, Sundance Institute, is the pre-eminent gathering of original storytellers and audiences seeking new voices and fresh perspectives. Since 1985, hundreds of films launched at the festival have gone on to gain critical acclaim and reach new audiences worldwide. The Festival has introduced some of the most groundbreaking films and episodic works of the past three decades, including Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Fair Play, A Thousand and One, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, Rye Lane, Navalny, Fire of Love, Flee, CODA, Passing, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Minari, Clemency, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Zola, O.J.: Made in America, On the Record, Boys State, The Farewell, Honeyland, One Child Nation, The Souvenir, The Infiltrators, Sorry to Bother You, Top of the Lake, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Hereditary, Call Me by Your Name, Get Out, The Big Sick, Mudbound, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, Brooklyn, Precious, The Cove, Little Miss Sunshine, An Inconvenient Truth, Napoleon Dynamite, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Reservoir Dogs, and sex, lies, and videotape. The program consists of fiction and nonfiction features and short films, series and episodic content, innovative storytelling, and performances, as well as conversations, and other events.

The festival takes place in person in Utah, as well as online, connecting audiences to bold new artists and films. The 2024 Festival will be held January 18–28, 2024. Be a part of the Festival at festival.sundance.org and follow the Festival on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.

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The Festival is a program of the nonprofit Sundance Institute. To date 2024 Festival sponsors include: Presenting Sponsors – Acura, AMC+, Chase Sapphire®, Adobe; Leadership Sponsors – Audible, DIRECTV, Hulu, Ketel One Vodka, Omnicom Group, Shutterstock, United Airlines; Sustaining Sponsors – Canon U.S.A., Inc., Cotopaxi, DoorDash, Dropbox, Element[AL] Wines, World of Hyatt®, IMDb, MACRO, Rabbit Hole Bourbon & Rye, University of Utah Health, White Claw Hard Seltzer; Media Sponsors – Deadline Hollywood, IndieWire, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, NPR, Variety, Vulture. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations helps offset the Festival's costs and sustain the Institute's year round programs for independent artists. Please visit festival.sundance.org for more.

Sundance Institute
As a champion and curator of independent stories, the nonprofit Sundance Institute provides and preserves the space for artists across storytelling media to create and thrive. Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, the Institute's signature labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. 

Sundance Collab, a digital community platform, brings a global cohort of working artists together to learn from Sundance advisors and connect with each other in a creative space, developing and sharing works in progress. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences and artists to ignite new ideas, discover original voices, and build a community dedicated to independent storytelling.

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Through the Sundance Institute artist programs, we have supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Big Sick, Bottle Rocket, Boys Don't Cry, Boys State, Call Me by Your Name, Clemency, CODA, Drunktown's Finest, The Farewell, Fire of Love, Flee, The Forty-Year-Old Version, Fruitvale Station, Get Out, Half Nelson, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hereditary, Honeyland, The Infiltrators, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Little Woods, Love & Basketball, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Mudbound, Nanny, Navalny, O.J.: Made in America, One Child Nation, Pariah, Raising Victor Vargas, Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, RBG, Sin Nombre, Sorry to Bother You, The Souvenir, Strong Island, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Swiss Army Man, Sydney, A Thousand and One, Top of the Lake, Walking and Talking, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, and Zola. Through year-round artist programs, the Institute also nurtured the early careers of such artists as Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Gregg Araki, Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko, Ryan Coogler, Nia DaCosta, The Daniels, David Gordon Green, Miranda July, James Mangold, John Cameron Mitchell, Kimberly Peirce, Boots Riley, Ira Sachs, Quentin Tarantino, Taika Waititi, Lulu Wang, and Chloé Zhao. Support Sundance Institute in our commitment to uplifting bold artists and powerful storytelling globally by making a donation at sundance.org/donate.

Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.