.png)
5 hours ago
2 ARTICLE AD
The Sundance Institute announced today that Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director of Artist Programs at Sundance Institute, will be honored at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival gala fundraiser, taking place at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley in Utah on January 24, 2025.
The event, dubbed Celebrating Sundance Institute, will see Satter recognized for her decades-long commitment to nurturing artists and cultivating independent film through the Sundance Labs, where artists convene to develop groundbreaking projects through an in-depth creative process.
Other honorees will include Dìdi filmmaker Sean Wang, as well as the Sugarcane duo of Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, who debuted their latest films at this past year’s festival and will respectively receive the Vanguard Awards for Fiction and NonFiction.
The Vanguard Award recognizes emerging artists whose work highlights the art of storytelling and creative independence. Past recipients have included Celine Song, Maite Alberdi, W. Kamau Bell, Nikyatu Jusu, Ryan Coogler, Siân Heder, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Radha Blank, Lulu Wang, Dee Rees, Damien Chazelle, Marielle Heller, Benh Zeitlin, and Boots Riley, among others.
In a statement shared with Deadline from Amanda Kelso, Acting CEO of Sundance Institute, she paid tribute to Satter, saying, “For over four decades Michelle has been devoted to truly championing independent storytellers. She has encouraged artists to own their voice, learn their craft, become fierce leaders, and develop their resilience in our changing ecosystem. Her life-long commitment to supporting artists, especially in underrepresented communities, has helped produce some of the most bold and distinctive films that have engaged audiences globally and sustained their visionary work throughout their career.”
Kelso added that the Sundance Institute is “thrilled to recognize Sean Wang, Julian Brave NoiseCat, and Emily Kassie — inspiring filmmakers that represent the next generation of independent storytelling, who have each been supported by the Institute. We look forward to our guests joining us at the Celebrating Sundance Institute gala, allowing us to continue our nonprofit efforts of launching, transforming, and sustaining the work of artists and their immeasurable impact on the world.”
With the Sundance Institute since Robert Redford’s 1981 formation of the organization, Satter has been a longtime leader of a team looking to develop impactful ways of mentoring emerging independent storytellers in a creative, rigorous, and safe space, which launched with the annual June Filmmakers Lab. She has acted as an influential mentor to generations of award-winning filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino, Chloé Zhao, Dee Rees, John Cameron Mitchell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Ryan Coogler, Miranda July, Kimberly Peirce, Darren Aronofsky, Sterlin Harjo, Taika Waititi, and many more. Additionally, over the years, she has built the Episodic Program, Producers Program as well as the Institute’s global initiatives and also oversees the Indigenous, Catalyst, and Documentary Film Programs. Founder of the Institute’s global digital storytelling platform, Sundance Collab, Satter’s contributions to film and advocacy have previously been recognized with numerous awards including the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an Honorary Oscar, the Women in Film Business Leadership Award, and the ACLU Bill of Rights Award.
Oscar-nominated for his documentary short Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, Wang’s debut feature, the coming-of-age dramedy Dìdi, won Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and was released by Focus Features on July 26. Both the filmmaker and his latest work were supported by the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship, Sundance Institute | The Asian American Foundation Fellowship, and the Institute’s 2023 Directors and Screenwriters Labs.
Investigating the Canadian Indian residential school system, NoiseCat and Kassie’s Sugarcane this year won Sundance’s U.S. Documentary Directing Award. National Geographic Documentary Films and Variance Films released the documentary in August. A member of the Canim Lake Band and descendant of the Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie, NoiseCat’s first book, We Survived the Night, will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2025 and translated into French and German. An Emmy- and Peabody Award-nominated filmmaker and investigative journalist, Kassie’s work for The New York Times, PBS, and Netflix has also covered the Taliban’s crackdown on women, sexual abuse in America’s immigrant detention system, drug and weapons trafficking in the Saharan desert, and child labor in Turkey.
The Sundance Institute’s annual gala enables the nonprofit to raise funds to support independent artists year-round through labs, grants, and public programming. This year’s edition of the Sundance Film Festival is set to take place in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah from January 23 – February 2, 2025, with select titles available online from January 30 – February 2.
