Sundance Film Festival Announces 2017 Jury

The Sundance Institute has announced a jury comprised of 24 experts in film, art, culture, and science for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. This year’s festival takes place January 19-29 in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Sundance, Utah.

ScreenCraft will be there! Will you?

Jury prizes will be announced at a ceremony January 28, which will be hosted by actress, comedian, correspondent and podcast host Jessica Williams. The ceremony will be livestreamed at sundance.org, and on YouTube and Facebook.

Here are the 2017 Sundance jury members:

U.S. Documentary Jury

• Diego Buñuel: French filmmaker, television news show host, and Director of documentaries and factual entertainment at Canal Plus.
• Julie Goldman: Emmy Award–winning producer and executive producer of documentary feature films.
• Robert Greene: Writer and filmmaker whose projects include the 2016 Sundance Film Festival award-winning Kate Plays Christine.
• Susan Lacy: Creator and executive producer of American Masters on PBS, which garnered an unprecedented 71 Emmy nominations and 28 wins under her watch.
• Larry Wilmore: Emmy Award-winning television producer, actor, comedian, and writer.

U.S Dramatic Jury

• Gael Garcia Bernal: Golden Globe Award-winning actor for his role in Mozart in the Jungle.
• Peter Dinklage: Redefined the concept of a leading man in the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award–winner The Station Agent, and perhaps best known for his role as Tyrion Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones.
• Jody Hill: Writer, producer, and director whose first film, The Foot Fist Way, premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
• Jacqueline Lyanga: Director of the American Film Institute’s annual film festival, and named by Variety's Women's Impact Report as one of the entertainment industry's female leaders deemed a game changer and innovator.
• Jeannine Oppewall: Academy Award-nominated production designer for L.A. Confidential, Pleasantville, Seabiscuit, and The Good Shepherd.

Word Cinema Dramatic Jury

• Nai An: Independent producer and founder of Dream Factory, which is dedicated to discovering, cultivating, and helping promising young Chinese directors.
• Sonia Braga: Debuted in the 1968 feature O Bandido da Luz Vermelha before achieving fame in Brazil as a star of telenovelas. Bruno Baretto’s 1976 hit Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands introduced Sonia to international audiences.
• Athina Rachel Tsangari: Director whose latest feature, Chevalier, won Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival and was nominated for Best International Film at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.

World Cinema Documentary Jury

• Carl Spence: Started his festival career in 1994 at the Seattle International Film Festival, which he helped grow over the past two decades to become one of the largest film festivals in North America.
• Marina Stavenhagen: Screenwriter of Streeters, for which she won the Mexican Academy Award for best screenplay, among other awarded films.
• Lynette Wallworth: Australian artist and filmmaker whose work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier section since 2009. Named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the year’s “100 Leading Global Thinkers.”

Short Film Jury

• Shirley Kurata: Los Angeles-based costume designer and wardrobe stylist for television and film projects, commercials, and music videos, in addition to styling for various fashion editorials and runway shows.
• David Lowery: Filmmaker whose films include Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Pete’s Dragon.
• Patton Oswalt: Comedian, actor, and writer, known for films such as Young Adult, Big Fan, and Ratatouille.

Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize Jury

• Heather Berlin: Cognitive neuroscientist, psychiatry professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and visiting scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute.
• Tracy Drain: Flight systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and deputy chief engineer for the Juno Mission.
• Nell Greenfieldboyce: Science correspondent for National Public Radio who covers everything from anti-matter to narwhals and DNA.
• Nicole Perlman: Winner of the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival's Sloan Grant for science in film for her screenplay Challenger, and co-writer of the 2014 blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy, which won both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award.
• Jennifer Phang: Director whose sophomore film Advantageous won a Sundance U.S. Dramatic Competition Special Jury Award, was acquired by Netflix and nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award.