The juries for the the 2018 Sundance Film Festival will be some of the most diverse ever, with three women — two of them African-American — on the five-member U.S. Dramatic competition jury.
Actors Octavia Spencer and Jada Pinkett Smith will be joined by cinematographer Rachel Morrison, actor Michael Stuhlbarg and director Joe Swanberg on the U.S. Dramatic jury, festival organizers announced Tuesday. People of color also are in the majority on the U.S. Documentary jury and prominent in other juries.
Seven juries will decide the award winners at Sundance, which starts Thursday night in Park City and runs through Jan. 28 at venues in Park City, Salt Lake City and the Sundance resort.
Winners will be announced at an Awards Night ceremony on Saturday, Jan. 27, at the Basin Fieldhouse in Kimball Junction. Emceeing the ceremony is actor-comedian Jason Mantzoukas, currently appearing on “The Good Place” and “Transparent” and starring in the Sundance premiere “The Long Dumb Road.”
(Courtesy Long Dumb Road LLC / Sundance Institute) Jason Mantzoukas (left) and Tony Revolori play men at personal crossroads, who take a road trip together in Hannah Fidell's "The Long Dumb Road," which will screen in the Premieres program of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Also at Awards Night, musicians Keegan DeWitt and Jeremy Bullock, joined by actors Nick Offerman (on bass) and Kiersey Clemons (on vocals), will perform the theme song from the Sundance film “Hearts Beat Loud,” which stars Offerman and Clemons.
Here are the jury lineups:
U.S. Dramatic
• Rachel Morrison, cinematographer (“Black Panther,” “Fruitvale Station”).
FILE - In this June 25, 2017, file photo, Jada Pinkett Smith arrives at the BET Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Smith told SiriusXM radio in an interview Wednesday, July 19, 2017, that she was a drug dealer when she first met Tupac Shakur in high school in Baltimore in the late 1980s. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
• Jada Pinkett Smith, actor (“Girls Trip,” “The Karate Kid”).
• Octavia Spencer, actor (“Hidden Figures,” “The Help,” “The Shape of Water”).
• Michael Stuhlbarg, actor (“The Shape of Water,” “Call Me By Your Name,” “The Post”).
• Joe Swanberg, writer-director-actor (“Drinking Buddies,” “Happy Christmas”).
U.S. Documentary
• Barbara Chai, arts/culture reporter for Dow Jones Media Group.
• Simon Chinn, producer (“Man on Wire,” “Searching for Sugar Man”).
• Chaz Ebert, CEO of RogerEbert.com.
FILE - This Jan. 3, 2017 file photo shows Ezra Edelman at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards in New York. Edelman is nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature for "O.J.: Made in America." (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
• Ezra Edelman, director (“O.J.: Made in America”).
• Matt Holzman, host/producer, KCRW’s “The Document.”
World Cinema Dramatic
• Hanaa Issa, director of strategy and development, Doha Film Institute.
Director Ruben Ostlund, centre, with his Palme d'Or award for his film The Square, presented by actress Juliette Binoche, left, and jury president Pedro Almodovar during the awards ceremony at the 70th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Sunday, May 28, 2017. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
• Ruben Östlund, director (“The Square,” “Force Majeure”).
• Michael J. Werner, producer (“The Grandmaster,” “Norwegian Wood”).
World Cinema Documentary
• Joslyn Barnes, co-founder, Louverture Films.
• Billy Luther, director (“Miss Navajo,” “Grab”).
• Paulina Suárez, director of Ambulante, Mexican film nonprofit.
Short Film
• Cherien Dabis, director (“Amreeka,” “May in the Summer”).
• Shirley Manson, lead singer of the band Garbage.
• Chris Ware, author and comics artist (“Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth”).
NEXT Innovator
• RuPaul, TV host and drag icon (previously announced).
Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film
• Robert Benezra, member of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, professor of biological sciences at Cornell.
• Heather Berlin, cognitive neuroscientist, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, co-host (with Neil DeGrasse Tyson) of “StarTalk All-Stars.”
• Kerry Bishé, actor-writer (“Halt and Catch Fire,” “Red State,” “Argo”), science enthusiast.
• Nancy Buirski, director-writer (“The Rape of Recy Taylor”).
The winner of the Sloan Prize, given to movies that depict science and technology, has already been announced: “Search,” a drama in the NEXT program starring John Cho.
(Juan Sebastian Baron | courtesy Sundance Institute) John Cho plays a father who uses his daughter's laptop to find clues to track her after she goes missing, in Aneesh Chaganty's "Search," which will screen in the Next program of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
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