Sundance 2023 Jury Set With Marlee Matlin, Destin Daniel Cretton, Jim Gaffigan and More

The 2023 Sundance Film Festival has set its jury, and among its members are “CODA” star and Oscar winner Marlee Matlin, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” director Destin Daniel Cretton and Jim Gaffigan.

Additionally, Jeremy O. Harris, Ramona S. Diaz and Petra Costa are among the filmmakers who have been appointed to this year’s competition juries for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, it was announced Wednesday.

After two years of virtual presentations, this year’s festival will return to in-person screenings and awards galas — with a concurrent online component for select films running Jan. 24–Jan. 29.

“The jury plays a crucial role in the Festival by amplifying breakthrough works and providing the audience with further opportunities for discovery,” Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente said in a statement. “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,” Kim Yutani, the Festival’s Director of Programming, said. “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.”

Leading the U.S. Dramatic Competition jury are Matlin, “Slave Play” playwright and “Zola” co-writer Harris and “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” director Eliza Hittman.

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The U.S. Documentary Competition jury will be led by Diaz, W. Kamau Bell and Carla Gutiérrez. Bell is a comedian who is both 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 by Kate Schatz. He is also the director and executive producer of Showtime’s documentary “We Need to Talk About Cosby.” Diaz is a Peabody, Gotham, IDA, and Emmy award-winning filmmaker best known for character-driven documentaries like “Imelda,” “Motherland” and “A Thousand Cuts.” Gutiérrez’s most recent film, “Julia,” premiered at Telluride and played at the Toronto Film Festival. She also edited the Emmy-nominated “Pray Away” for Netflix.

Costa (“The Edge of Democracy”), Karim Amer (Showtime’s “The Lincoln Project”) and Alexander Nanau (“Toto and his Sisters” and “Collective”) will lead the World Cinema Documentary Competition Jury. The juror for the NEXT section of Sundance will be Madeleine Olnek, who herself has had four films at Sundance. She also wrote and directed the first onscreen portrayal of a queer Emily Dickinson in the groundbreaking “Wild Nights With Emily.”

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The jury for the Short Film Competition will be led by Cretton, Marie-Louise Khondji and Deborah Stratmen. Khondji is the founder of Le Cinéma Club — a free, curated streaming platform presenting one film a week. Stratmen’s work — over 40 movies thus far — investigates issues of power, control and belief.

The jury for the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize is Gaffigan, Dr. Heather Berlin, Dr. Mandë Holford, Shaline Kantayya and Lydia Dean Pilcher. They deliberated in advance of the Festival and awarded the Prize to Sophie Barthes’ “The Pod Generation.”

The awards will be announced at an intimate gathering of artists comprising the Festival lineup, with the Festival’s social channels sharing the award recipients as they are announced on Friday, Jan. 27. Single-film tickets will go on sale beginning Thursday at 10:00 a.m. Mountain.

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