Meet the Jury Members of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival

PARK CITY, UTAH, January 11, 2023 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the 16 jurors granting awards for artistic and cinematic excellence at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, including the five jury members who awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Film Prize.The 2023 Festival will take place January 19-29, 2023, in person in Park City, Salt Lake City, and the Sundance Resort, along with a selection of films available online across the country January 24-29, 2023. Single Film Ticket sales begin on January 12 at 10 a.m. MT.

Sixteen critical voices across film, art, and culture will grant this year's awards for feature and short films, which will be announced on Friday, January 27. This year's awards ceremony will be an intimate gathering of artists comprising the Festival lineup, with the Festival's social channels sharing the award recipients as they are announced.

This year's jurors are: Jeremy O. Harris, Eliza Hittman, and Marlee Matlin for U.S. Dramatic Competition; W. Kamau Bell, Ramona Diaz, and Carla Gutierrez for U.S. Documentary Competition; Shozo Ichiyama, Annemarie Jacir, and Funa Maduka for World Cinema Dramatic Competition; and Karim Amer, Petra Costa, and Alexander Nanau for World Cinema Documentary Competition; Madeleine Olnek for the NEXT competition section; Destin Daniel Cretton, Marie-Louise Khondji, and Deborah Stratman for the Short Film Program Competition.

The jury for Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize is Dr. Heather Berlin, Jim Gaffigan, Dr. Mand Holford, Shalini Kantayya, and Lydia Dean Pilcher. They deliberated in advance of the Festival and awarded the Prize to The Pod Generation, directed by Sophie Barthes.

The jury plays a crucial role in the Festival by amplifying breakthrough works and providing the audience with further opportunities for discovery, said Joana Vicente, CEO of Sundance Institute. We thank them for their dedication to artistic excellence and their thoughtful lens on cinematic expression and all that independent film offers.

We are thrilled to welcome these esteemed and accomplished visionaries to the Festival as our jury, said Kim Yutani, the Festival's Director of Programming. Together they will embark on a journey through our program to highlight the artistic achievements and honor the compelling storytelling in this year's Festival. We can't wait to hear what they think.

Festival audiences attending in person will have a role in voting for the 2023 Audience Awards, open to films in the U.S. Competition, World Competition, and NEXT categories. Attendees are also able to vote for the Festival Favorite, which is selected across the entire feature film program.

Following are the 2023 Sundance Film Festival Jury members and their respective sections:

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION JURY

Jeremy O. Harris is the playwright and creator of the most Tony-nominated Broadway play ever, Slave Play. His play Daddy opened to great acclaim at the Almeida Theatre in London in March 2022, and in Japan at the Tokyo Globe Theatre and Cool Japan Park Osaka. Jeremy co-wrote A24's critically-acclaimed feature Zola alongside director Janicza Bravo, which won two 2022 Independent Spirit Awards. His television credits include HBO's Euphoria and TV adaptation of Irma Vep.

Eliza Hittman is an award-winning filmmaker. Her latest film, Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features, 2020), had its U.S. premiere at Sundance, where it won a special jury prize. Hittman received the Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic category at Sundance the year of her second feature, Beach Rats (NEON, 2017). Her debut feature, It Felt Like Love (2013), premiered at Sundance in NEXT and was a New York Times Critic's Pick.

Marlee Matlin's first film, Children of a Lesser God, garnered her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her 35-year career includes CODA, which broke records at Sundance and went on to win the SAG Award for Best Ensemble and the Academy Award for Best Picture. Nominated for four Emmy Awards, she also starred in the Tony Award-nominated revival of Spring Awakening. In 2023, Matlin will make her directorial debut for Sony's Accused on Fox.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION JURY

W. Kamau Bell is a comedian and director and executive producer of the Showtime documentary, We Need To Talk About Cosby. He's the host and executive producer of CNN's United Shades of America and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Do The Work: An Antiracist Activity Book, co-written with Kate Schatz.

Ramona S. Diaz is a Peabody, Gotham, IDA, and Emmy award-winning Asian American filmmaker best known for her character-driven documentaries that combine a profound appreciation for cinematic aesthetics and potent storytelling. Her films Imelda, Motherland, and A Thousand Cuts, among others have been screened and won awards at Sundance, Berlin, Busan, HotDocs, IDFA, and many other top-tier film festivals. Diaz is both a Guggenheim and a USA Fellow.

Carla Guti rrez, ACE, edited the Oscar-nominated films RBG and La Corona. Her latest film, Julia, premiered at Telluride and played at the Toronto Film Festival. She edited the Emmy nominated Pray Away for Netflix. Her work has received awards at Sundance, Tribeca, Berlinale, the Critics' Choice Awards, the National Board of Review, and the duPont-Columbia Awards. Guti rrez was nominated for an American Cinema Editors Eddie Award and is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures.

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION JURY

Shozo Ichiyama is a film producer based in Tokyo, known for Flowers of Shanghai by Hou Hsiao-hsien and A Touch of Sin by Jia Zhang-ke, as well as the programming director of Tokyo International Film Festival.

Annemarie Jacir has written, directed, and produced over 16 films with premieres at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Toronto. All three of her f

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