James Allan Schamus is an American screenwriter, producer, business executive, film historian, professor, and director. He is a frequent collaborator of Ang Lee, the co-founder of the production company Good Machine, and the co-founder and former CEO of motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company Focus Features, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal. He is currently president of the New York-based production company Symbolic Exchange, and is Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University, where he has taught film history and theory since 1989.
Oliver Ackland is an Australian actor.
Jurnee Diana Smollett is an American actress. She began her career as a child actress appearing on television sitcoms, including On Our Own (1994–1995) and Full House (1992–1994). She gained greater recognition with her role in the critically acclaimed Kasi Lemmons directed film Eve's Bayou (1997), which earned her a Critics' Choice Movie Award.
Christine Vachon is an American film producer active in the American independent film sector.
Ondi Doane Timoner is an Emmy-nominated American filmmaker and the founder and chief executive officer of Interloper Films, a full-service production company located in Pasadena, California. Timoner is a two-time recipient of the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for her documentaries Dig! (2004) and We Live in Public (2009). Both films have been acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art for their permanent collection.
Sarah Price is an American filmmaker, director and producer known for the feature documentary American Movie.
Edet Belzberg is a documentary filmmaker. She won a 2005 MacArthur Fellowship.
Heather Rae is an American film and television producer and director. She has worked on documentary and narrative film projects, specializing in those with Native American themes, and is best known for Frozen River, Trudell and Tallulah.
Joana Vicente is a Portuguese independent movie producer and executive. A prominent figure in the New York film industry, Vicente has produced over forty films with her producing partner and husband Jason Kliot. In 1999 Vicente and Kliot produced Tony Bui's feature debut, Three Seasons, which took the three top awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize. Vicente and Kliot have since worked with directors such as Steven Soderbergh, Brian De Palma, Hal Hartley, Nicole Holofcener, Jim Jarmusch, and Alex Gibney.
Margaret Brown is an American film director who has directed four feature length documentaries. Her film Descendant, about the descendants of survivors of the last ship to carry enslaved Africans into the United States, was shortlisted for the 2023 Academy Awards.
Eliza Hittman is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer from New York City. She has won multiple awards for her film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which include the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award—both for best screenplay.
Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami is a Sundance Award-winning Iranian documentary filmmaker who was born in Tehran. She has directed one full-length documentary, four short documentaries and one animated documentary.
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 19 to January 29, 2017. The first lineup of competition films was announced November 30, 2016.
Sabaah Folayan is an American filmmaker and activist. Her debut documentary feature, Whose Streets?, on the 2014 Ferguson protests, premiered in competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
Novitiate is a 2017 American drama film written and directed by Maggie Betts in her feature directorial debut. Starring Margaret Qualley, Melissa Leo, Morgan Saylor, Dianna Agron, Julianne Nicholson, Liana Liberato, Denis O'Hare, and Maddie Hasson, the film follows a young woman (Qualley) who starts to question her faith as she trains to become a nun.
Nanfu Wang is a Chinese-born American filmmaker. Her debut film Hooligan Sparrow premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2017. Her second film, I Am Another You, premiered at SXSW Film Festival in 2017 and won two special jury awards, and her third film, One Child Nation, won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Feature at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Wang is the recipient of a 2021 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking, from the Vilcek Foundation.
Alysa Nahmias is an American filmmaker and the founder of Ajna Films.
Celine Held is an American and British film director, writer, and actress. Her debut feature film Topside, co-directed with her partner Logan George, premiered at the 77th Venice International Film Festival. Her short film Caroline that she co-wrote, co-directed and starred in, was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Her additional short film work has premiered at Sundance Film Festival and at South by Southwest.
The Burial is an upcoming American legal drama film directed by Maggie Betts and written by Betts and Doug Wright. It is based on the true story of lawyer Willie E. Gary and his client Jeremiah Joseph O'Keefe's lawsuit against the Loewen funeral company, as documented in the 1999 New Yorker article of the same name by Jonathan Harr. It stars Jamie Foxx as Gary, Tommy Lee Jones as O'Keefe, Jurnee Smollett, Mamoudou Athie, and Bill Camp.
