Meet the Sundance Juries That Will Award the Next Class of Filmmakers Including ‘Daughters of the Dust’ Director Julie Dash

Everything looks a little different this year and the Sundance Film Festival is no exception. 

While it usually occurs in Park City, Utah, this year The Sundance Film Festival will take place virtually on February 2. For all the films that are nominated, a special jury has been chosen to pick each winning film based on the category of the film. There are six juries comprised of twenty-two total jurors which include names you know, and some you will be excited to learn about. 

The U.S. Dramatic Jury is comprised of Julie Dash, a previous Sundance winner for her film Daughters in the Dust, Cynthia Erivo, an award-winning actress, and Hanya Yanagihara, an author, and writer who works for T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

The U.S. Documentary Jury brought together Ashley Clark, the curatorial director of the Criterion Collection also a film critic and writer, Joshua Oppenheimer, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and Lana Wilson, an award-winning director who had several films premiere at Sundance. 

The World Cinematic Dramatic Jury includes Zeynep Atakan, a producer and member of several international film organizations such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Isaac Julien, a filmmaker with a portfolio of outstanding films, and Daniela Vega, an Oscar-Award winning transgender actress from Chile. 

The World Cinema Documentary Jurors host Kim Longinotto, a Sundance filmmaker, Mohamed Saïd Ouma, who is the executive director of Documentary Africa, and Jean Tsien, a filmmaker with 35 years of experience who has worked in multiple creative roles. 

The NEXT Jurors only have one duo that you may have heard of, Kate and Laura Mulleavy the creators of Rodarte who came out with their film debut in Woodshock which they wrote and directed, starring Kirsten Dunst. 

Lastly, the Short Film Jury takes Raúl Castillo, a filmmaker and actor, Tacita Dean, a visual artist who works with multiple film media, and Inge de Leeuw, a museum curator and programmer, to judge these films. 

The Director of Programming, Kim Yutani, says of the Sundance jurors, “Our jurors have reached a high level of achievement in their individual fields, and can bring their unique perspective to the process of analyzing and evaluating films.”

You can learn more about how to join Sundance Film Festival virtually, on their website here.