Sundance Director Eugene Hernandez Contends With AI Storytelling, In-Person-Only Screenings At 2024 Festival
15.01.2024 - 17:33
/ variety.com
Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Eugene Hernandez has reached the top of the mountain. The journalist turned nonprofit executive has spent decades rising through the ranks of the American independent film scene. This January he assumes his seat at its apex: as the director of the Sundance Film Festival.
Hernandez, the co-founder of IndieWire and longtime leader of Film at Lincoln Center, got the coveted job in late 2022. But his official duties begin with this year’s festival, the 40th edition of the annual celebration of film that kicks off Jan. 18.
He still remembers his first time in the luxury ski town of Park City, Utah, watching Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi” in 1993. “It all feels full circle,” Hernandez tells Variety, adding that he shed tears when Sundance CEO Joana Vicente called to offer the job. Sundance remains the preeminent film festival for spotlighting new talent.
This year, the group received 17,000 submissions, many of them from emerging moviemakers hoping to establish themselves in the business. That’s the highest number of applications in festival history. Hernandez and more than a dozen individual programmers, including the well-respected director of programming, Kim Yutani, have watched every hour of those submissions.
His priority, he says, is to ensure that Sundance remains a place of discovery in an historically volatile landscape for movies. “I want to honor the democratic process that Kim and the team have designed and also bring an openness and curiosity,” he says. With the unveiling of his inaugural lineup in December, Hernandez flexed a few different muscles — there’s a smattering of big-name talent and directors (par for the course at Sundance) paired with an exciting field of
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