EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I is an overview of the Utah film industry in the current moment. Part II offers a summary preview of the Sundance 2026 films, which The Utah Review will cover. See here.
It is a bittersweet opening to the Sundance Film Festival which will continue through Feb. 1, with in-person premieres in Park City, Utah and Salt Lake City, along with plenty of online options during the second half of the festival. The festival will offer the first public tributes to Sundance Founder Robert Redford since his death last fall. Also, this is the final year Utah will be home to the festival before its move to Boulder, Colorado in 2027.
The slate includes 90 feature-length films representing 28 countries and territories and 36 of 90 (40%) feature film directors are first-time feature filmmakers. Fourteen of the feature films and projects were supported by Sundance Institute in development through direct granting or residency labs. This year, the film and episodic slate includes 94, or 97%, world premieres. Beginning January 29, more than half the feature program will be available online for audiences nationwide to watch from home at festival.sundance.org. The curated online program will include all competition titles (U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, and NEXT presented by Adobe), as well as additional selections from the feature, episodic, and Short Film Program presented by Vimeo.
The 2026 slate was selected from 16,201 submissions from 164 countries or territories, including 4,255 feature-length films. From these feature film submissions, 1,676 were from the U.S. and 2,579 were international. The seven episodic projects were selected from 470 submissions. The program of 54 short films was curated from 11,480 submissions. Of these submissions, 4,914 were from the U.S. and 6,566 were international. Works from 22 countries and territories are represented in the short film lineup.
There is a solid representation of films with Utah connections, including six documentaries either with a Utah Film Center fiscal sponsorship, or executive producer credits with Geralyn Dreyfous, cofounder of the center and Impact Partners Film, or both. Some scenes in Hot Water, a Sundance feature narrative directed and written by Ramzi Bashour, were filmed in San Juan County in Utah, including Goosenecks State Park.Twin Rocks Cafe and Recapture Lodge.
© 2025 Sundance Institute | photo by Breanna Downs.
THE STORY IS UTAH
During the more than 40 years that Sundance has been present in Utah, the Beehive State’s film ecosystem has flourished with an impressive critical mass that packs a significant punch, considering a population of nearly 3.6 million (the 30th most populous state in the country).
And, as Sundance prepares to open with its final edition in Utah before moving out of state next year, many are wondering what new marquee event might be waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, taking stock of what already is available in Utah emphasizes that instead of reinventing the wheel or duplicating existing parts of that ecosystem, it makes more sense to forge holistic collaboration, uniting the diverse components and programs.
Last year, the Utah Motion Picture Incentive Program enabled 36 productions to film across 14 Utah counties, generating more $136 million in production spending and creating more than 2,600 jobs for Utahns. Utah welcomed such major productions as HBO’s Mountainhead, shot in and around Park City, the CBS Original television series Marshals, shot in Summit and Wasatch counties and Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, shot in Moab. Utah’s creative economy continues to grow through local leadership, with more than 40% of productions in 2025 created by homegrown talent and local production companies.
“We’ve cultivated a thriving ecosystem of talent, infrastructure and incentives that will continue to attract filmmakers and productions to our beautiful state,” Virginia Pearce, the Utah Film Commission’s director, said. “We remain focused on investing in a strong film industry, one that drives our creative economy and inspires the next generation of artists and audiences. We believe that Utah is a place full of innovation and creativity. We want to see that thrive and grow organically.”
Incentives include the Motion Picture Incentive Program (MPIP), which offers a 20%-25% post performance incentive that offers a cash rebate or fully refundable, non-transferable tax credit on qualified dollars left in the state of Utah. This incentive is ideal for narrative, documentary, and episodic series that intend to be distributed commercially. The second principal option is the Community Film Incentive Program (CFIP). This offers a 20% post-performance cash rebate specifically for projects that originate in Utah with budgets between $100,000 – $500,000. The CFIP targets new and up-and-coming local filmmakers and productions.
Utah’s commitment to rural film production continues through the Rural Utah Film Incentive, which over the past four years has helped productions spend more than $200 million in rural communities. “Choosing Utah was one of the best decisions we made in setting up our film,” Jay Roewe, senior vice president of HBO Global Incentives and Production Planning (Mountainhead), said. “The scale and scope offered in its beautiful landscapes and uniquely modern locations have allowed us to seamlessly tell our larger-than-life story with the backdrop it deserves. We are grateful for the wonderful support of the Utah Film Commission, including the film incentive and outstanding local crew, and look forward to this being a very special and successful production.”
Dualist production company.
Nine days into the new year, the Utah Film Commission announced three new productions for state film incentives, with an estimated economic impact of $2.6 million, along with 165 new jobs filming across the state in Juab, Kane, Salt Lake, Tooele, Utah, Washington, and Wayne counties. They included Gary Auerbach, local producer and director, whose latest project is Taken From Me, a genre thriller for Lifetime, and was approved for a Utah Community Film Incentive. Jennifer Davis, producer, said, “Beyond the locations, Utah offers a strong and growing filmmaking community, giving us the creative space to align culture, family, and identity within the world of the show. The location supports something much deeper, it’s about mentorship, collaboration, and creating space for underrepresented voices to thrive both on screen and behind the camera.” The film will begin shooting this month in Salt Lake and Utah counties.
Receiving a Utah Motion Picture Incentive is Tokens, an indie feature directed by locally based Tom Russell and set in the period of World War II by Tom Russell. With plans to be filmed in Juab, Salt Lake, Utah, and Washington counties, Russell concluded Utah was the ideal location for because of “its cinema-friendly infrastructure, its abundant talent, and its vast array of extraordinary locations, properties, and craftspeople.”
Also approved for a Utah Motion Picture Incentive is a genre science fiction feature, Sol Hershowitz’s Guide To Extraterrestrial Life, described by producer Bernard Hunt as “a road trip quest across the vast landscapes of America on a mission toward extraterrestrial first contact.” Utah was a natural choice, given the many other films have relied on the state’s natural landscapes to evoke the otherworldly visuals intended for the narrative. The film begins shooting this month in Kane, Salt Lake, Tooele, and Wayne counties.
Independent films made in Utah are flexing with greater visibility. Last year, Mouse, an award-winning independent film produced and shot in Salt Lake City, expanded its festival circuit screening tour. Directed by Kenny Riches, who also starred as Denny, this understated yet richly textured narrative also featured his real-life mother, Hiroko Riches, as Nobuko, Denny’s mother. Mouse, Riches’ fourth feature-length film, took two top honors at the 2025 Brooklyn Film Festival, winning Best Narrative Feature and the prestigious Grand Chameleon Award. It also received a Best Film jury prize at Film Fest Knox in Tennessee. The film also has screened at the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival and San Diego Asian American Film Festival. It was named one of The Utah Review’s Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment.
In making Grizzly Night, directed by Burke Doeren, which will have its vOD / digital release on Jan. 30, Tyson and Lauren Call selected rural Utah locations in Wasatch County, including Heber and Kamas. The production received the tax rebate incentive in the Motion Picture Incentive Program.
Raised in Utah, Tyson met Lauren, a Southern California native, in 2012 when he was enrolled in Chapman University’s well-known film program. In an interview with The Utah Review, Lauren said initially she was “super skeptical” about moving to Utah. But, as the couple set out four years ago to make Grizzly Night, the advantages of shooting a production in Utah became immediately evident. More than 90% of the production crew were based locally. “Here in Utah, when you’re done for the day, you can go to a comfortable home and not feel that you have to compromise or downsize unlike the higher cost of living in Southern California.”
Tyson added that Utah fit the bill for a feature based on the importance and wisdom of respecting nature. Based on a 1967 incident, Grizzly Night is an adventure drama about a novice female ranger leading strangers to safety while Glacier National Park is besieged by a pair of grizzly bear attacks. However, in response to the attacks, the U.S. National Park Service instituted a new bear education program, pack-in/pack-out policy for food and garbage, designated campgrounds and cooking areas, and installed cables where campers could hang their food.
Production went smoothly in August 2023, where the filmmakers and crew accomplished the shoot in 22 days. They also went to Montana for three days to film B-roll. Doeren had many warm words to say about filming in Utah. “We needed a place that featured a chalet, cabins, lakes, trails, woods, and accessibility for production vehicles,” he explained in a prepared statement. “That was a tall order, but we managed to find the perfect spot in Utah. And because we were filming in Utah, we were supported by the highly talented local cast, crew, and vendors based near Salt Lake City.”
Their sights are set on the next narrative feature, the comedy Salt & Honey with screenplay by Skye Emerson, who is locally based. It is set to be filmed in Helper, Utah, one of the state’s most dynamic arts and cultural communities. The screenplay, which was workshopped with Amy Redford at a Sundance Director’s Lab, has already garnered a good deal of attention and honors, including a Wescreenplay Feature Winner in 2024, both as a Lab Winner and Feature Script Winner. Other honors included Academy Nichols Screenplay Semifinalist and Outstanding Screenplays Semifinalist (2023), a Sundance Feature Track Finalist (2021), Stage 32 – Best Unproduced Scripts of 2022 and Covertly Top 1% of Unproduced Comedy Scripts (2024).
A THRIVING UTAH ECOSYSTEM FOR FILM
There already are more than 40 film festivals, including Tumbleweeds and the Utah Queer Film Festival organized by the Utah Film Center, the Fear No Film program at the Utah Arts Festival and FilmQuest in Provo, which was founded by filmmaker Jonathan Martin in 2014. Now recognized as one of the most significant genre film festivals in the country, FilmQuest has won praise from industry writers. In a 2022 summary of the best horror film festivals in the world, FilmQuest was cited accordingly, as it “has risen fast to become of the coolest genre festivals in the U.S., with a fair selection and judging process that allows for indie discoveries in numerous categories,” The nine-day festival included a Halloween costume all-nighter on opening weekend, a hatchet-throwing event, and a speed dating-style filmmaker meet and greet. In addition, horror filmmakers honed their skills at screenwriting labs, pitch sessions, and even a lab dedicated to “Creating a Franchise,” led by A Quiet Place creator and writer Bryan Woods.” There are festivals dedicated to films that coincide with some of Utah’s greatest assets,including outdoor recreation and winter sports. Representing one of Utah’s historically significant performing arts, the state’s large dance community has delved extensively into the art of screendance, making films with choreography set specifically for video. This year will be the 13th edition of Utah Dance Film Fest, which accepts submissions from around the world.
As for education and training, Utah’s offerings have been ranked among the bets nationally and internationally. The University of Utah’s master of fine arts program in film and media arts is ranked in the top 10. The U’s games program is ranked #1 in the world among public institutions for undergraduate game design and #2 for graduate programs, according to the 2025 Princeton Review rankings. With an emphasis on hands-on production skills Utah Valley University has more graduates in film programs than any other college or university in the state. Brigham University’s animation program is internationally distinguished and many graduates land major jobs in the industry immediately upon receiving their degrees. Utah Tech University draws students looking for nearby nature locations as well as opportunities in digital filmmaking.
PitchNic, one of Spy Hop Productions’ most exciting programs, returns for its 23rd edition this year and this year’s class of young Utah filmmakers is looking to build on a legacy where more than 95% of films that have been produced in the program have gone on to be screened at and win awards at film festivals in the U.S. and international venues which highlight short films. From last year’s PitchNic films, Hija was recently awarded an honorable mention at Reale Film Festival in Italy, and garnered an award at the Power24 Film Festival in South Africa. Hija (Abigail Tello, director; Olga Pedraza-Cano, director of photography: Katelyn Neal, producer) is a nonfiction film about Latina daughters facing family guilt and pressures on the journey from home toward independence. Also, gaining attention at festivals is A “Haunted” House (Oliver Day, director; Robbie Altman & Arthur Cummins, directors of photography; Margaret Plumb, producer; Jay Tracy, production designer). It is a narrative about a documentary film student who follows two boys and their uninvited social-media-obsessed friend as they go on an unforgettable night of ghost hunting.
The Davey Foundation (created in memory of actor, director, producer, musician and community activist David Fetzer) also has become a major player in local independent filmmaking, not only providing financial support but also organizing the annual Davey Fest to screen films. The Davey Foundation’s grant-winning shorts have screened at prominent festivals around the world, including Sundance, SXSW, and Tribeca, and have spurred the film careers of writers and directors, including Laura Moss (Fry Day), Lauren Wolkstein (Beemus, It’ll End in Tears, part of collective:unconscious), Celine Held and Logan George (Babs), Nora Kirkpatrick (Long Time Listener, First Time Caller), and Zach Bornstein (Floss). Davey Grant-supported films have been nominated for and won awards, such as Nick Dixon’s Emmy for Mine and Vika Evdokimenko’s BAFTA nomination for Aamir.
UTAH FILM CENTER
In 2025, the Utah Film Center dedicated its new home in Salt Lake City’s Marmalade District, named after Geralyn White Dreyfous, the founder of the center. It is dramatically more spacious than any of its previous homes that included the compact space on Main Street in downtown Salt Lake City (now the home of the Tamarind Vietnamese restaurants and 11th floor offices in the Broadway Media Tower on 300 South. Its new home includes incubator spaces and editing suites for filmmaking professionals, content creators and media artists (among the current users is BW Productions); a lobby, lounge and kitchen for entertaining, networking, and informal gatherings; a Black Box Studio Theater with 175 seats for screenings, live events, and multipurpose community programming; a multipurpose room for classes, workshops, and hands-on learning experiences and outdoor areas. The new home amplifies the Artist Foundry to a level as an outlet for filmmaker support that will match the impact of its Fiscal Sponsorship Program.
The fiscal sponsorship program has proven its concept, especially for filmmakers who are not just looking to submit their films to Sundance but to give them life extending to national and international film festival circuits as well as distribution in theatrical channels and broadcast and streaming platforms. Once a project is accepted into the program, the film can take advantage of the film center’s role as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, making it easier for donors to contribute directly to the project of their choice. It has become a win-win model for all stakeholders, including donors who contribute to specific center’s fiscal sponsorship initiatives.
Donations are completely tax-deductible, and filmmakers receive 94 percent of the donations, as the center only uses six percent of each donation to cover administrative expenses. And, every film that receives fiscal sponsorship is eventually presented at one of the many free, public screenings the center offers every year. Last year, the Fiscal Sponsorship program processed more than 450 donations totaling more than $22 million. More than 135 projects processed a donation in 2025.
In fact, the administrative fees from processing $ fiscal sponsorship funds in the last two years has been sufficient to cover the center’s annual operating budget costs. The center has long been known for its prudent, lean-and-mean approach to operating budgets so as not to sacrifice any funding potential for creative projects that benefit Utah filmmakers. Over the last decade, anywhere between three and eight films each year that received fiscal sponsorship by the Utah Film Center have premiered at Sundance. This year three fiscally sponsored documentaries are on the Sundance slate: Cookie Queens, Queen of Chess and The Lake. Last year, Porcelain War was nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards while Death by Numbers was nominated for Best Documentary Short at the Academy Awards. We Are Pat took a Special Jury Mention for New Documentary Director at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival while Possible Selvesreceived an Emmy for Best Independent Program in the Los Angeles area. Arctic Alchemyis now available on streaming platforms
In March, Edie Arnold is a Loser will be on the 2026 SXSW slate, while Baby Doe and Starman were in SXSW last year. Snowland is in this year’s Slamdance. On Healing Land, Birds Perch enjoyed a solid run in 2025, with eight festival appearances.
THINKING ABOUT POST-SUNDANCE
An alternative to establish a film festival to replace Sundance, a new Utah-based nonprofit (tentatively named Nuovo Film Festival, Inc.) has received $2 million funding to launch an initiative that would augment and extend the many components of the state’s filmmaking ecosystem.
Working within the context of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, planners have taken into account that the Sundance Institute and its year-round labs, held usually at the Sundance Mountain Resort, will stay in Utah for the foreseeable future. Noting that Redford had indicated before his death that his wish was for the labs to stay in Utah, Dreyfous explained that the Sundance Lab model would be used to expand filmmaking collaborations in the state with Silicon Slopes, Utah universities, the Nucleus Institute, and other industry partners. “It is important to invest and sustain that allegiance to the model of Sundance Labs which has developed over the last 44 years,” she added.
One objective is to cultivate Utah’s leadership in technological innovation in filmmaking, especially as new AI tools come into play. Citing now CGI and VFX technologies gave filmmakers fresh options to integrate them into their creative vision, Dreyfous, acknowledging that her position on AI might not be seen as a popular opinion among her colleagues and peers in the industry, it is important to explore how AI would fit responsibly and ethically in the creative environment.
Photo: Sundance Institute.
In a 2025 blog for Raindance, one of the world’s largest independent film festivals which is based in the U.K., Elliot Grove summarized the advantages and perils of AI in filmmaking. Grove suggested that large language models can assist screenwriters in brainstorming ideas, developing characters, and even drafting dialog,”particularly useful during the early stages of development, when writers are exploring different directions for their stories.” He added that prudent uses of AI can streamline the pre-production process and in workflows during the production and post-production stages. AI-driven data analysis can be useful in decisions about script development, marketing strategies and distribution channels.Grove also cited new storytelling formats such as Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
As for the negatives, Grove said concerns are justified about threats to original and artistic integrity and intellectual property and ownership issues, as well as the “automation of tasks like scriptwriting, editing, and VFX raises concerns about job displacement in the film industry,” along with the ethics of privacy and consent when it comes to using AI in analyzing casting decisions and performance reviews. Warning that one should, ot give into the temptation of relying heavily on AI, Grove said that creatives should continue to prioritize the values of emotional intelligence and lived presence, and not use AI to replace the ingenuity of human creative potential.
One example that supports Dreyfous’ support for considering AI is the recent documentary Assembly, which received its Utah premiere last fall at the Utah Film Center’s Utah Queer Film Festival. The documentary chronicled the work of multimedia artist Rashaad Newsome as he created and set up a massive installation and exhibition in New York City. Among the exhibition’s most striking elements of embodied politics and really its core was the nonbinary giant AI Being. Newsome sees opportunity in the AI era. In a 2024 interview published elsewhere, Newsome explained, “The foremost goal of my research is to decolonize AI by developing and implementing counter-hegemonic algorithms. These algorithms are designed to prioritize non-Western indexing methods and highlight alternate histories and archives, including abolitionist, queer, and feminist texts. By doing so, I aim to create AI systems that are more inclusive and representative of diverse perspectives, challenging the dominance of Eurocentric narratives in technology.”
In a statement, Mellus, citing the Utah Film Center’s commitment to strengthening the ecosystem for filmmaking and film enthusiasts through film exhibition, media arts education, and artist support, said, We look forward to seeing how these public funds will be leveraged to support Utah’s film community, its over 40 home-grown festivals, and its economic impact. We hope they will draw on our current infrastructure, such as the Utah Film Commission, Utah Film Studios, and the programs offered through local universities and nonprofits, to support the people and jobs that build community and invest in Utah’s creative sector. Our community is always stronger when we work together.”
For the time being, Sundance remains one of the world’s largest film festivals that is algorithm-free, but that virtue is being tested by the increased difficulties of getting films into broader release and distribution.
As for the broader industry, Dreyfous said the industry continues to struggle in the wake of the pandemic and subsequent strikes as well as studios contending with anemic box office numbers and the entrenched consumer habits with streaming platforms. For Impact Partners Film, which has a long-running impeccable run of award-winning documentary films including several Academy Award winners, the challenges of distribution are evident. Once eight out of ten films readily found their way into the marketplace. Now, it is one out of every 20.
In the current turbulence where public television and radio have been severely kneecapped, the question of treasuring and cherishing documentaries is urgent and consequential. Nick Fraser, who created the BBC documentary strand Storyville nearly 30 years ago, summed it nicely:
Thought of as an app, documentaries wouldn’t make it. They have no real cultural recognition. They’re always seen as part of something else – film, television, journalism, even real life.
They inhabit, creatively, a nowhereness, always somewhere between other things; but that turns out to be a very good place from which to observe the contradictions of our times.
They may be hard to find, but you would miss them if they went. You might even miss them very much. I’ve watched documentaries in editing rooms, at festivals, in the endless versions they go through, with so much pain taken and given, before they’re finished.
I like to watch them with audiences, and at home, too. No one will ever be able to tell me definitively what a documentary does, or how it affects people, any more than we can say for sure what is the cumulative effect of a newspaper report, a sonnet, a Shakespeare tragedy, Madame Bovary, or Mein Kampf.
But I do know that documentaries, taken as individuals, resemble a group of friends. I’d miss them if they went.
If the species became extinct, I am convinced that this would be a more than small loss for humanity.
As for the initial rollout of Jolt, which Impact Partners founded as an alternate streaming platform with niche and specialized areas of subject interests, Dreyfous said they are focusing on how to activate more users to convert from trials to paid subscriptions. Conversion rates vary widely among streaming platforms. Netflix converts around 93% of users from free trials to paid subscriptions, significantly higher than Amazon Prime Video’s rate of 73%.
Jolt works with filmmakers to make their completed projects available for a limited time, as the platform focuses on a finely curated slate of films to ensure that they can reach the largest possible audience at a time. Two elements stand out in Jolt’s model. Filmmakers retain all of their creative rights and data. To facilitate optimal data-driven algorithms for a specific film and its relevant potential audience, Jolt suggests a minimum ticket price while users also can gift tickets to individuals whom they believe also will be interested in a specific film.