Sundance Film Festival Names Eugene Hernandez As Director

The Sundance Institute named long-time independent film champion Eugene Hernandez as director of the organization’s influential annual Sundance Film Festival and head of its year-round public-programming initiatives.

“Supporting independent artists has always been the bedrock of the Institute and the fuel behind the Festival,” said actor and director Robert Redford, who founded the institute in 1981. “The fact that we have been able to hold true to this core purpose is a testament to the vitality of the Institute and to the Festival’s platform as a place to discover new films, ideas, and artists. For almost three decades, Eugene has been working on a parallel path with many of the same values and objectives in mind.”

Hernandez has been festival director of the New York Film Festival, and will remain there through this year’s event, which runs from Sept. 30 to Oct. 16. He originally joined the festival’s parent organization Film at Lincoln Center in 2010 as director of digital strategy, then became deputy director in 2014. Most recently, he was Sr. Vice President of Film at Lincoln Center, executive director of the New York Film Festival, and executive editor of the FLC’s publication Film Comment.

Sundance has been the most prominent of film festivals focused on indie creators, with many of its event winners going on to awards and other notable success despite their modest origins. Two of its most-awarded 2020 films, CODA and Summer of Soul, won a total of four Oscars earlier this year, including best documentary feature for Summer of Soul, and best picture for CODA.

Hernandez will be the festival’s fourth director, succeeding Tabitha Jackson, who took over after the January 2020 festival from long-time director John Cooper, just a few weeks before the pandemic shut down the film industry, and turned the festival business in general upside down.

Jackson, who had been with the institute for nearly nine years, had the thankless task of pivoting the festival to a largely online-only experience in 2021 and again this past January, before resigning in June following a London version of the festival.

During Jackson’s short time leading the festival, it launched a metaverse-style virtual gathering place for festival fans, while connecting the gathering to what the institute said was “its largest audiences to date with a liveness that was important in absence of the physical gathering.”

The virtual platform gave the festival a reach far beyond the chi-chi, logistically challenged confines of home base Park City, Utah, a small ski town about an hour’s drive northwest of Salt Lake City, or even certain rarified precincts of Hollywood and Manhattan/Brooklyn. Fans were able to access screenings, filmmaker talks, how-to discussions and more through a custom-built virtual platform also created under Jackson’s term.

To further extend the festival’s reach, it partnered with indie arthouse organizations around the United States to launch a Satellite Screens initiative, giving those outlets badly needed programming at a time when most smaller theaters were getting battered by both sharply lower attendance and fewer available new indie films.

By the time Sundance returns next Jan. 19, it will be, for the first time, a hybrid event featuring both in-person audiences and events, as well as online access to many components of the festival for virtual festival attendees.

The future for indie films remains more complex, as many independent theaters and chains have shut down. Even UK-based Cinemark, which owns the industry’s biggest U.S. theater chain, Regal, has had to file for bankruptcy because of the press of debt on its finances.

Subscription streaming-video services have increasingly replaced theaters as a first stop for many indie and mid-sized films that tend to appeal to older, more review-driven fans (much like the festivals themselves).

Indeed, both CODA (by AppleAAPL
TV+) and Summer of Soul (by Hulu) were scooped up by streaming services for record acquisition prices during or soon after the festival and spent little time in theaters.

Hernandez, who will arrive with 2023 festival planning already well in place, will have to navigate the changing environment for indie films and arthouse venues, remain loyal to Sundance’s powerful indie roots, and program for new kinds of viewers and buyers.

The announcement closes a loop of sorts in Hernandez’s life, a quarter century after his first visit to the Sundance Film Festival in the mid-1990s fueled his interest and commitment to independent film.

“Nearly 30 years ago, looking for direction and curious, I went to the Sundance Film Festival for the first time. I immediately connected with its mission, and it changed my life,” said Hernandez. “I’m both energized and humbled to accept this opportunity to join Sundance. Supporting artists has been at the center of my career’s work, and for the last twelve years, I’ve had the privilege of growing and learning at Film at Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival. I’m ready for this inspiring challenge and unique opportunity to engage artists and audiences at Sundance, work with its best-in-the-business team, and follow in the footsteps of exceptional leaders.”

Hernandez then cofounded and for 15 years was editor in chief of IndieWire, a Los Angeles-based publication focused on the sector that now is owned by Penske Media Group, which also publishes entertainment trade publications Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, and Rolling Stone.

“He’s been at the forefront of supporting independent artists and deeply invested in the careers of storytellers and the field as a whole,” said Joana Vicente, the institute’s CEO. “I look forward to working closely with him as he leads the Festival and builds out our public programming — shaping critical conversations all year round, supporting our artist community, and expanding the possibilities for Sundance audiences and artists alike. He joins at a critical time in the industry for independent filmmakers when the Institute has never played a more important role for artists, audiences, and the field in total.”

Hernandez joins the Sundance leadership in November, after the New York Film Festival wraps up, and will report to Vicente. He’ll be working between the organization’s Los Angeles and New York offices, while spending time as well in the festival’s Park City, Utah operations.

Hernandez is an at-large member of the Motion Picture Academy, which awards the Oscars. He serves on the boards of advisors for SXSWXSW
, SeriesFest and Art House Convergence, and consulted with several non-profits, written for numerous publications and is a regular participant on juries and panels at various conferences, including for 2015’s version of Sundance.