2018 Sundance Film Festival

Gus Van Sant, director of Golden Globe winning films Good Will Hunting (screenplay for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) and To Die For (best actress for Nicole Kidman) and Milk.

Festival goers packed the Sundance TV lounge on Main Street as the HFPA hosted the Women Breaking Barriers panel in association with Sundance Institute and Sundance TV Saturday. HFPA journalist Elisabeth Sereda moderated the discussion and opened the proceedings announcing a $50.

A couple of thousand noisy protesters braved the snow falling in Park City, Utah for the "Respect Rally", this year’s edition of the Women’s march, marking the 1st anniversary of the Trump presidency and last year’s march at Sundance. This year’s theme was registering voters and mobilizing turnout for the November mid-term elections.

Sundance 2018 opened with fair skies and perfect weather - the perfect ambiance for a new crop of diverse, edgy and interesting films.

As part of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Globe Awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) will continue to host special events, this time at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The HFPA will host a special “Women Breaking Barriers” panel featuring accomplished women from various fields in the film industry, moderated by HFPA member Elisabeth Sereda.

Sundance 2018 officially got underway with that time-honored ritual: the opening day press conference with founder and figurehead Robert Redford was joined on stage by Sundance Festival programmer John Cooper and Sundance Institute director Keri Putnam. Some of the proceedings were familiar to anyone who has trekked up Heber Pass to attend the festival before.

A trusted bellwether of the year in independent cinema, the 2018 Sundance Film Festival starts today, with a strong and diverse line-up – 38% from female directors, 32 % non-white- ready to repeat last year’s stellar performance, which yielded award-worthy titles such as Call Me By Your Name, Get Out and Mudbound, plus a roster of critically acclaimed films – The Big Sick, Patti Cake$, A Ghost Story and the documentaries An Inconvenient Documentary, Chasing Coral and Last Men in Aleppo. The 2018 vintage includes several titles already attracting attention from distributors – a direct result of the fierce competition between traditional channels like HBO and the new streaming, ever-expanding streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.