The future location of the Sundance Film Festival, which for 40 years has been headquartered in Park City, Utah, is still uncertain, but one thing that’s clear is the massive effort that goes into putting together the lineup each year.
“The focus has always been on a place of discovery and new voices. That’s what Sundance is about, and that’s not going to change,” John Nein, who has been a Sundance Film Festival programmer for over 20 years, told the Deseret News on a Zoom call. “Regardless of what happens in that process, the festival this year and in 2026 will be in the same place and serving a community that we’ve been part of for more than 40 years.”
Programming the lineup, Nein said, is a delicate balancing act of highlighting newer filmmakers in the industry along with new projects from familiar faces. The process takes almost a year.
Tough decisions are made — for the 2025 selection, festival programmers started with roughly 16,000 entries and condensed that into a lineup that includes 87 feature films and six episodic projects.
Festival programmers saw more international submissions than ever during the latest cycle, Nein said, illustrating the festival’s wide reach.
“People are making movies — it’s a great sign. It’s a sign of the health and vitality of independent storytelling,” Nein said. “And there’s always ones that are really hard to let go of and to not see in the program. We have a very tightly curated program, and in the end, it’s difficult to have it not include all the films that you love.”
On Wednesday, the festival revealed the films that did make the cut for 2025. And there’s one statistic that makes Nein especially proud: 36 of the 87 film entries (41%) highlight first-time feature filmmakers.
“We always want to have a very high number of films that are from either first-time directors or, in many cases even if it’s a second or third feature, it’s not necessarily someone who has become well known or whose work has seen a lot of visibility,” Nein said. “It’s about … really shining a light on people whose work hasn’t really had that visibility yet.”
But the festival — which will run in Park City and Salt Lake City from Jan. 23-Feb. 2 (there will be an online presence during the latter half) — will also see the return of several established writers and directors.
That includes Justin Lin, who came out of Sundance in the early 2000s with “Better Luck Tomorrow” and went on to direct a few of the “Fast and Furious” films and 2016′s “Star Trek Beyond.”
Bill Condon, who released “Gods and Monsters” at Sundance in the late 1990s and went on to direct “Chicago,” “Dream Girls” and part of the “Twilight” saga, also returns to the festival for what will probably be one of the buzzier films due in part to its cast.
The list of celebrities featured in the 2025 Sundance films will likely generate a lot of excitement for festivalgoers — Condon’s film, “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” stars Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna. Other well known stars who are part of the 2025 lineup include Benedict Cumberbatch, Conan O’Brien, Mark Ruffalo, John Malkovich, Steven Yeun and Lauren Graham, to name a few.
As people sift through the program and consider purchasing tickets for individual films, which go on sale Jan. 16, Nein has one piece of advice.
“I just encourage people to take a risk on watching something that doesn’t feel like a sure thing — the same way that those filmmakers took a risk making it,” he said.
Here’s a brief overview of the 2025 festival lineup — including some of Nein’s top picks.
The popularity of biographies and ‘larger-than-life figures’
Documentary filmmakers are back in full force in the 2025 Sundance lineup. There are a number of music biographies on the slate.
Questlove — whose Sundance film “Summer of Soul” won the Oscar for best documentary feature in 2022 — is returning with what Nein described as a “fantastic, energizing film” about Sly & The Family Stone.
Amy Berg, whose 2006 documentary “Deliver Us From Evil” was nominated for an Academy Award, brings to life a film that explores late singer Jeff Buckley, who had released just one album before his unexpected death in 1997.
Both the Buckley film, titled “It’s Never Over,” and a film about “Queen of Tejano Music” Selena Quintanilla explore the lives of musicians gone far too soon, pulling from family archives to provide never-before-seen footage, Nein said.
“One to One: John & Yoko” highlights another late musician by exploring the 18 months John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent living in Greenwich Village, New York, back in the 1970s.
Outside of major music figures, other documentary subjects include Marlee Matlin, who in 1987 became the first deaf actor to win an Academy Award — and who starred in “CODA,” the first film out of Sundance to win the Oscar for best picture.
A film about Sally Ride, which is the 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize Winner for its depiction of science and technology, explores the life of the first American woman in space.
A year and a half after Paul Reubens’ death, “Pee-wee as Himself,” a two-part documentary, gives viewers a glimpse of Reubens’ (aka Pee-wee Herman’s) influences and struggles as an artist.
And “Prime Minister” explores former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s life and five years in power.
But in striving for balance, the Sundance lineup isn’t just putting the spotlight on well-known names.
“As a counterpoint to biographical films about larger than life figures ... one of the things you see in the program this year is a lot of movies about ordinary people and ordinary lives,” Nein said. “Working lives, people who are demonstrating resilience.”
Viewers will find that theme prevalent in a number of films, Nein said — including one that comes from a Utah director.
A Utah film — and a theme of resilience
The 2025 Sundance Film Festival has at least one Utah-based film.
“Omaha” comes from director Cole Webley, who studied film at Brigham Young University and has lived in Utah for more than 20 years, according to information shared with the Deseret News.
Writer Robert Machoian and director of photography Paul Meyers also live in Utah, and much of the film was shot in and around Salt Lake City.
The film centers on a father driving his kids across the country after they’ve lost their home to foreclosure, Nein said.
“It’s very much a story of facing hard times and adversity, but it’s a really beautiful story about resilience and family,” Nein said.
That theme, Nein noted, comes up in a few films.
“Rebuilding,” starring Josh O’Connor from “The Crown,” tells the story of a rancher in Colorado who has lost his home and family to a wildfire and ends up developing a relationship with a community of people in a trailer park who have also lost their homes. “Train Dreams,” an adaptation of the Denis Johnson novella, focuses on a logger who helped build railroad lines as the country was expanding to the west.
“Even though it’s a historical drama and it’s epic, it’s also really intimate and small in this story about one life and one person trying to make sense of the world,” Nein said.
The festival programmer also noted a number of films that highlight the power of young people affecting change.
“Deaf President Now!” chronicles the effort from students at Gallaudet University, the world’s only deaf university, to secure a deaf president in the late 1980s. “Middletown” highlights a group of teens in upstate New York who in the early 90s worked to expose the hazards of toxic waste in their community.
”These kids are incredible,” Nein said.
Top picks for the Sundance Film Festival
With such a robust lineup, it’s nearly impossible to choose a favorite. But Nein did share some of his top picks.
- ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ — With Bill Condon at the helm, and stars Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna (”Andor”) in the cast, this film about two prisoners who share a cell and form an unlikely bond over the plot of a Hollywood musical is sure to draw a lot of interest, Nein said.
- ‘The Thing With Feathers’ — In this film, a young father grappling with the unexpected death of his wife “loses his hold on reality as a seemingly malign presence begins to stalk him from the shadowy recesses of the apartment he shares with his two young sons,” per a film description. Nein said Benedict Cumberbatch gives a “phenomenal performance” in this film.
- ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’ — Starring Carey Mulligan, this comedy-drama tells the story of a long-broken up music duo that is brought back together at the request of an eccentric millionaire to play a concert. “It’s really funny,” Nein said, “and I think a creative way of telling the put-the-band-back-together story.”
- ‘DJ Ahmet’ — Ahmet, a 15-year-old shepherd in a small North Macedonian town, just wants to be a DJ. He “finds refuge in music while navigating his father’s expectations, a conservative community and his first experience with love — a girl already promised to someone else,” according to a film description. “It’s such a warm, delightful story about the clash of tradition and modernity and about the power of music to bring people together,” Nein said. “I think people will come out of that one just so happy.”
- ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’ — This documentary focuses on two poets, Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley, one of whom has an incurable cancer diagnosis. “This is such a deeply moving and unexpectedly very funny story about the journey that they take together, and also the way that they try to understand it ... through poetry, and it’s heartbreaking, but it’s so inspiring,” Nein said.
- ‘All That’s Left of You’ — From Palestinian American director Cherien Dabis, “All That’s Left of You” looks at three generations of a Palestinian family, a story that spans almost 75 years, Nein said. The festival has highlighted some of Dabis’ previous work, and Nein believes “All That’s Left of You” will not disappoint. “It’s really epic and also very small and very personal,” he said. “It kind of fits into the great family sagas, those movies that we see that are really about family over generations. I think it’s a very, very powerful film.”
In-person ticket packages and passes and online ticket packages and passes for the film festival are currently on sale. Single film tickets go on sale Jan. 16.
For more information about the lineup and festival schedule, visit festival.sundance.org.