2020 Sundance Film Festival: Juries Announced

25 Jurors to Award 31 Prizes

Park City, UT - Sundance Institute will gather 25 celebrated and revered expert voices across film, art, culture and science to award feature-length and short films shown at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival with 31 prizes, announced at a ceremony February 1. Short Film Awards will be announced at a separate ceremony on January 28. The Festival takes place January 23 through February 2 in Park City, Salt Lake City and Sundance, Utah.

The awards, which recognize standout artistic and story elements, are voted on by each of 6 section juries, including, in the case of the NEXT Innovator's Award, a jury of one. As in years past, Festival audiences have a role in deciding the 2020 Audience Awards, which will recognize 66 films in the U.S. Competition, World Competition and NEXT categories; audiences will also vote on a Festival Favorite film across categories, which will be announced the week following the Festival.

The juried Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize was awarded to Tesla; information on those jury members appear below.

The 2020 Sundance Film Festival Jury members are:

U.S. DRAMATIC JURY

Rodrigo Garcia

Rodrigo Garcia's films include the award-winning Nine Lives, Albert Nobbs, Mother and Child, and Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her. His television credits include the pilots of In Treatment, Carniv le, Big Love, Bull, and the upcoming Party of Five series reboot. Garc a is co-CEO of the digital studio Indigenous Media, which produced the series Five Points, Lauren, and Blue.

Ethan Hawke

Ethan Hawke has starred in over 60 films, including Training Day, Before Sunrise (1995 Sundance Film Festival), and Boyhood (2014 Sundance Film Festival), which garnered Hawke one of his four Academy Award nominations. Recently, he won a Gotham Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and over 20 film critics' awards for his performance in First Reformed. Besides an on-screen actor, he is a director, an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, a Tony Award-nominated stage actor, and a novelist.

Dee Rees

Writer/director Dee Rees is the first Black woman nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, for her highly acclaimed film Mudbound (2018). Her previous credits include the multiple-Emmy-winning film Bessie (2014) and her Film Independent Spirit Award- and Gotham Award-winning debut feature, Pariah (2011). Her latest film, The Last Thing He Wanted, is an adaptation of the Joan Didion novel and stars Anne Hathaway as veteran DC journalist Elena McMahon.

Isabella Rossellini

Isabella Rossellini has appeared in numerous films, including Il prato (The Meadow), Blue Velvet, Cousins, Death Becomes Her, and Joy. Her award-winning series of shorts-Green Porno, Seduce Me, and Mammas-offer comical and scientifically insightful studies of animal behavior. She recently toured with her latest theatrical show, Link Link Circus. Rossellini also works to preserve the films of her father and mother, Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, and runs an organic farm in Brookhaven.

Wash Westmoreland

Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer's feature Quincea era premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, winning both the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize. Their feature Still Alice won a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe and earned Julianne Moore her first Academy Award. After Glatzer's passing, Westmoreland directed the acclaimed Colette (2018 Sundance Film Festival) and the psychological drama Earthquake Bird. Originally from Leeds, England, Westmoreland currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY JURY

Kimberly Reed

Kimberly Reed's Dark Money (2018 Sundance Film Festival) was named one of Vogue's 66 best documentaries of all time, nominated for four Critics' Choice Awards and the IDA Documentary Award for Best Documentary, awarded the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, and shortlisted for an Academy Award. Prodigal Sons, the first documentary by a transgender filmmaker to be theatrically released, won 14 international awards. Reed is also one of Filmmaker magazine's 25 new faces of independent film.

Rachel Rosen

Rachel Rosen is the director of programming for SFFILM, which presents the annual San Francisco International Film Festival, where she also served as the associate director of programming. She spent eight years as the director of programming for Film Independent and the LA Film Festival and has worked in various capacities for the New York Film Festival, New York's Film Forum, and TriStar Pictures. She holds an MA in communications from the documentary film program at Stanford University.

Courtney Sexton

Courtney Sexton is senior vice president for CNN Films. Sexton works day to day with filmmakers to supervise the production of documentary films for theatrical exhibition and distribution across CNN's platforms. Since Sexton joined CNN Films, the team has acquired or commissioned more than 45 original feature and short films. Sexton's recent work includes Apollo 11, RBG, Three Identical Strangers, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, Halston, and Scandalous.

E. Chai Vasarhelyi

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, known for Free Solo, which earned a BAFTA Award, the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and seven Emmys. Her other films include Meru (shortlisted for a 2016 Academy Award ; won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival), Incorruptible, A Normal Life, and Touba. She has received grants from Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Noland Walker

Noland Walker is vice president of content at ITVS and oversees the cultivation of independent documentary films for the award-winning public media series Indepe

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