How to Win Over Sundance Programmers

This week, a conversation with programmers Ana Souza and Diana Sánchez Maciel on the ins and outs of the selection process.

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The 47th edition of the Sundance Film Festival is in full swing this week. There are 91 features/episodics in competition this year, as well as 53 short films. The films that made the cut faced impossible odds. The number of submissions hit new records this year — there were 4,410 features and 12,098 short films — giving each film less than a .05% chance of acceptance. It’s hard to fathom how any film that doesn’t come from a big name director gets noticed. But it happens. This week, I’m publishing an excerpt from a New Filmmakers Los Angeles panel discussion I moderated late last year with Ana Souza, a veteran features programmer and manager of programming for the festival, and Diana Sánchez Maciel, a more recent addition to the shorts programming team. They explained the ins and outs of the selection process, what it takes for them to become a champion for a film, and some of the trends they’ve noticed among submissions in recent years.

When you got to Sundance, were there any initial instructions about programming? Or were there conversations with people about how they approach the process? 

Ana: Not so much. I started as a coordinator in the department, and the nice thing about coming in from that entry level place was I was able to sit and observe. And a big part of that was just being exposed to what the meetings were, what the conversations were between everyone. It had already been going for so long. A lot of the team members had been there for going on twenty years. The process itself felt like something that has really carried over for a long time, so the main thing was just observing how it worked.  And then for me, the thing that was really interesting was developing taste and focus and understanding what I'm passionate about and how to articulate that. I think that can sometimes be a challenge, if a whole room feels one way and you feel another way. But you still want to be able to have those conversations. The nice thing about the way Sundance does it is, it's really collaborative, so you're seeing a lot of different people from different backgrounds who came up in film in different ways. In other festivals, you're seeing one or two programmers in charge of one section and that's that. But I think the strength of our program comes from the dialogue and the back and forth around agreeing to program something or not. 

Diana: When I first started screening shorts at Sundance, I had an initial phone call with Mike Plante, who's a senior programmer. And he was very clear about there being no agenda. Just watch all the films assigned to you. You do have to argue why you like something if other programmers don't like it. And for me, if a film surprises me and I'm in complete awe, I know this is going to be a film I'm going to argue for. So we're really trying to act as audience members and not give preference to anyone. 

It seems like an element of surprise is important to both of you as programmers. And I'm curious what that looks like. 

Ana: I feel like it can be many things. In a way, that's what keeps me in this job — being able to still see stuff that surprises me. I think of a film like All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, which is so formally different than so many films we see, where you almost had to throw out the way you're used to watching a film and open yourself up to experiencing it in a completely new way just to be taken away by that story and the world of that film. So I think it can be formal, I think it can be in the story, it can be in the filmmaking voice, and also just tone. We're not supposed to play favorites, but one of my favorite films we showed last year was Fremont, which did a really lovely festival circuit run. And a film like that is so refreshing and surprising in its tone and direction and the choices it's making. I think surprise can manifest itself in many different ways and you just have to be open to it.    

Diana: I feel like there's no formula. Those films that Ana mentioned are films that are so personal and feel so seamless in the way they're surprising you in their abandonment of narrative. It's more sensorial, and you're being absorbed into it. Stories that always surprise me are films that feel so personal and have a strong voice and are passionate about what they're depicting. And they're very delicate with characters and with writing. And they're very thoughtful about the imagery they're creating. That's when a film really makes me think and I know I want to argue for it. 

When you do love a film, what does the conversation look like with people you have to convince? 

Ana: That's always the tough part. On features, it's such a long process. We're doing this for weeks. And it does become about the long game in a way. If it's something where you know that maybe you have to build support slowly, then maybe you're strategic about how you send it around to the team. We always want to give a film the best shot possible. So something we very proactively try to do is share it with the person we think will be the champion for it. So if there's something we're really on the fence about, we'll send it to the person on the team who's going to love it because their taste is aligned with what this kind of film is. That can gauge what the next steps of the process are. At the end of the day, we're looking for the film to find its champions. I always tell people that there's not a lot of terrible films out there, and there's not a lot of incredible films out there. There's a lot of perfectly fine, watchable films that are sort of in the middle. And we're looking for the ones that will bring that passion in the room. So sometimes the films that are very divisive in the room are still the ones that end up getting programmed, as opposed to one that everyone is more neutral on. 

Diana: And if your film is rejected, it doesn't mean it's bad. Filmmakers should not feel discouraged. For me as a programmer, if I like a film at a festival that didn't get programmed I feel like I can take it anywhere I want in other side gigs I may have. 

Are there turnoffs that will disqualify things for you? 

Ana: I think there's no blanket turnoff. But there's stuff that you see a lot of. People on the team, though, will have very specific pet peeves. Mine is if there's a baby but it's so clearly a fake baby and it's in the shot. When you're seeing films at the volume we're seeing them, though, you do start to see a lot of similar patterns. Sometimes it's over-exposition. But it's really hard to be prescriptive about things like that. Because even a film that's doing those sorts of things can be interesting and excite you.  

Diana: My pet peeve is just bad acting, or writing that feels very obvious. Writing that is explaining everything. I want you to trust your audience. 

Ana: There's also the story structure where it starts with: "This happened, and this is how I got here" and then smash cut. That story structure is so common, but sometimes it's really effective. I think you just have to be deliberate and know why you're doing the things you're doing. Is that the authentic thing that's connected to your story and to what you have to say?

Have you noticed any trends in submissions that might portend anything for the future of movies?

Ana: The positive trend is there are more women making films, and there are more people of color making films. It's still very slow gains, but seeing the larger number of submissions there has been really encouraging. But other things just speak to what's happening in the zeitgeist. One thing that I've been pretty excited to see is more genre — and genre in ways that are very creative and unusual and related to very interesting topics politically and socially. You see something like Get Out do really well and then all of a sudden there's a whole wave of films following in the footsteps. A few years ago we played a lot of genre even outside of midnight. We just got so many genre submissions and a lot were really good. 

Diana: I think films that are highlighting diverse identities and their stories have definitely grown in submissions. This past year I've been working with a filmmaker from Santa Cruz, California who made this series of films around Oaxacan Indigenous people in Santa Cruz. It's all about their rituals and their culture and their food and everything. And it's so refreshing to see those kinds of stories. We took it through a series of classroom visits and a lot of the students felt really connected to it and felt like we could have really long discussions about Indigenous people in Oaxaca and in Santa Cruz. And it was all about cultures and geography and surpassing borders. This was the first festival experience for this filmmaker, and as a minority filmmaker they felt very surprised that their film was getting recognition. And having these very niche categories or entire festivals spotlighting BIPOC stories is meaningful. They're opening a door to all these filmmakers that perhaps don't feel secure at festivals like Sundance or Mill Valley. 

If you were to each start a film festival, what ideas of your own or from a festival you've worked at would you bring to that festival?  

Diana: I think if I could found a festival it would be around experimental film. 

Ana: A festival I loved working with a few years ago that was short lived in LA but is still going in Mexico is Ambulante. I just loved that festival's approach to programming and going into these different spaces, where it's really just breaking down the barriers between the audience and the film and the filmmakers in these unexpected, creative places. When we did it in LA, we screened in places like on the LA River. Literally in the river. Doing things like that was really special. And unfortunately it only lasted, I think, two editions, before the funding went away. But I think it would be so exciting to do things like that where you're taking back public space and making it part of festivals.

Listings

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