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Sundance May Now Be the World’s Most Important Documentary Launchpad

By Anthony Kaufman


Against a dark night sky, the marquee of the Egyptian Theater reads: "Sundance Film Festival."

Image credit: Maya Dehlin. Courtesy of Sundance Institute


In 2023, when Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, audiences were stunned by the film’s blistering images of life and death in the war-torn southern Ukrainian city, but few could have anticipated this distressing film’s far-reaching path in the marketplace, from a raft of international sales all the way to winning the 2024 Best Documentary Oscar. This past week, Chernov was back in Park City with another nonfiction stunner, 2000 Meters to Andriivka. The film not only chronicles Ukrainian soldiers’ harrowing and haunting fight for every inch of their land but also transcends its specific reportage to become one of the best combat films ever made. If 2000 Meters goes all the way to Oscars 2026, the industry shouldn’t be surprised this time.

It’s not called the Sundance “International” Film Festival, but it has become increasingly so, becoming one of the most vital global launchpads for nonfiction work. Despite the fact that there have yet to be any flashy global streamer deals (or even smaller sales) announced for any of this year’s documentaries, the industry’s wheels are churning. Highly praised films, such as Geeta Gandbhir’s riveting Directing Award winner The Perfect Neighbor and David Osit’s complex media exposé Predators are likely to find buyers soon, while at least one of the festival’s World titles was scooped up for international sales.

“Sundance has that special sauce to launch a feature documentary in the world,” says Oli Harbottle, Chief Content Officer at Dogwoof, which is representing international sales for both 2000 Meters to Andriivka and the PBS American Masters doc Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, both of which were heralded in Park City. (While 2000 Meters already has a U.S. slot on PBS/FRONTLINE set for next year, Dogwoof will be using Sundance to sell the film across international territories.) 

“I think what’s happening to documentary filmmaking is that it’s more globally told,” says FRONTLINE’s Raney Aronson-Rath, producer of both Chernov’s films. “For 20 days or 2000 Meters, the conversation at Sundance was a very global conversation, the documentary community there is very international, and we continue to see that at the Oscars.”

According to Sundance’s Senior Nonfiction Programmer Basil Tsiokos, the festival’s “special sauce” comes down to a few factors: “We have the benefit of our position on the calendar at the start of the year, a tightly curated lineup that allows us to put a spotlight on a select number of titles, and a track record in successfully launching international projects,” he says.

While Sundance entries have littered the Oscar race over the decades, so “it's not a wholly new phenomenon,” says Tsiokos, the last few years have proven an incredible run for international Sundance docs. Since 2022, foreign and international-themed Sundance docs have dominated the Oscar race, launching three films that year (Navalny, All That Breathes, A House Made of Splinters), another two in 2023 (20 Days in MariupolThe Eternal Memory), and four this year (Black Box Diaries, Porcelain War, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, Sugarcane). With very few other ways to uplift hard-to-market international documentaries in these challenging times, awards–and particularly the Oscars–have become sales agents and distributors’ easiest way to raise these films’ profiles.

For Harbottle, the timing of Sundance is a big factor. “It’s the first festival of the year and you’re in awards season, but people are looking ahead and using the nominations to confirm what the Academy is looking for,” he says.

“The companies which are in the awards game are taking notice of this year's nominations, and are paying more attention to the world docs than perhaps they would have in the past,” says Jason Resnick, North American Consultant to Autlook Films, which was representing three World Competition documentaries at Sundance (Coexistence My Ass!, a timely look at a pro-Palestinian Israel comedian, the Berlin-bound Khartoum, and How To Build a Library, backed by executive producer bigwigs Roger Ross Williams and Geralyn Dreyfous.)

A Sundance slot also positions a film well at the European Film Market (EFM) in February, where more international buyers are in attendance. Even if the film isn’t an official selection in Berlin, Dogwoof’s Harbottle says with a Sundance selection “the wind is behind you, and you can really bring that momentum to the international market.” 

But even if the festival may be the prime launchpad with its esteemed reputation and proximity to the major streamers and buyers based in North America, “the market has contracted, for sure,” admits Harbottle. While he touts the company’s Black Box Diaries sale to MTV Documentary Films last year, he admits U.S. sales, in particular, remain a conundrum. “We gave up trying to figure out the U.S. market.” he says. “It has gone from a fair market to totally overheated to absolutely nothing to trying to find its feet again.”

Arianna Castoldi, a sales agent who represented Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat and this year’s Sundance Italian entry GEN_, a subtle portrait of a doctor who provides gender-affirming care and fertility treatments, is blunt about Sundance’s crucial role for docs. “If you don’t go to Sundance, you don’t exist for the American market,” she says. 

While Sundance’s U.S. documentaries have always been and continue to be the priority for attending press and buyers, the right international documentary can also breakthrough from Sundance to the global stage. The nonfiction industry appears to have noticed, as submissions for international feature docs to Sundance have increased at a much higher rate than U.S. submissions. (In the last two years, international submissions have surpassed 1,000, while the number of U.S. feature doc submissions have remained fairly steady over the years at around 700-800.)

“Sundance is where we have the most success, even more than if we launch out of Berlin, CPH: DOX, or IDFA,” admits Kim Christiansen, executive producer of documentaries and co-productions at Denmark’s DR Sales, which is representing David Borenstein’s Sundance selection Mr. Nobody Against Putin, an equal parts irreverent and disturbing chronicle of an unassuming Russian teacher who finds himself caught up in the country’s pervasive propaganda machine. 

“For me, it’s the most important film festival if we can have a film in competition,” explains Christiansen, who credits Sundance for launching the career of iconoclast Mads Brügger in 2010 after his film The Red Chapel won the World Documentary Grand Jury Prize. And then last year, the company represented the Norwegian favorite New Kind of Wilderness, which after winning the Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury prize last year went to 70 festivals and sold to numerous territories. “And that really doesn’t happen at other festivals,” he adds.

Christiansen partially attributes the phenomenon to the “hardcore curation” of only 10 films in the World Cinema Doc competition. “With so few films, the hype around each one gets a lot more intense,” he says.

“The strong curation of the competition section makes a selected film stand out very brightly,” agrees Stephan Kloos, head of Rise and Shine World Sales, which represented the Ukraine-Germany coproduction Iron Butterflies at Sundance 2023. According to Kloos, the selection “ignited the spark for international distribution of the film” to theatrical buyers, TV broadcasters, and a multitude of festivals who all acknowledge the “quality sign” of a Sundance selection.

That Sundance stamp of approval can also help select U.S. documentaries sell to overseas territories. While international sales agents suggest that many American nonfiction films that focus on specific domestic U.S. political issues may feel too insular for international audiences, the quality of Sundance’s films can transcend borders. Last year, for instance, U.S. docs such as Look Into My Eyes and Gaucho Gaucho went on to play several international film festivals and were acquired by international sales agents Dogwoof and Charades, respectively. “It really doesn’t matter whether a film is from the U.S. or another country,” says Harbottle. “What matters is whether the themes will travel.” 

This year, INDOX, the new company launched by former Dogwoof executive Luke Brawley, acquired international rights for Brittany Shyne’s U.S. entry Seeds, a lyrical black-and-white portrait of Black farmers and their families in the American South. From the description, it doesn’t immediately scream global content, but Brawley argues against the “‘it’s too American, it just won’t work’ argument,” noting the film has already been invited to some international film festivals. “I absolutely think the film will do great internationally as a beautiful film in of itself. It just needs folks to believe in it and get behind it.”

Sundance’s primacy in the marketplace comes with a hitch: Because of the hype surrounding deals, star talent, and Oscar chances, smaller films can still get lost in the moment. Castoldi, for example, admits that for international docs, in particular, “it can be really difficult to be seen” at Sundance. She admits to having some regret about launching GEN_ in Park City, “because it’s a very intimate, fragile documentary,” she says. However, as the film heads out to screen at a number of prominent international film festivals this spring, she adds, “At least we still have the Sundance logo.”


Anthony Kaufman is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to his Substack; film instructor at the New School and DePaul University; and senior programmer at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Doc10 film festival.