Hollywood had a, to put it politely, very weird year in 2023. With the prolonged writers and actors strikes, tentpole films underperforming, mergers and acquisitions, the streaming wars racking up billions of dollars of losses… where can we find a little hope for the future of the industry?

As it turns out, a little ski town just outside of Salt Lake City provides exactly that every January. We went to the Sundance Film Festival again this year, and in one of the murkiest times in recent show business memory, we talked to several of the festival's filmmakers and a senior programmer about why film festivals are still a key part of the ecosystem, and how they might be even more important moving forward.

This video was written by Clint Gage and edited by Justin Donaldson.

Want more CineFix @ Sundance coverage? Well hurry up and check out everything else we posted about it!

All the Movies We Saw at Sundance 2024 -    • Sundance 2024: All the Movies You Nee...  
The Babadook - 10 Years Later and This Is Still The Scariest Movie About Parenting -    • Does “Really Getting” The Babadook Ma...  
The Top 10 Movies To Ever Come Out of Sundance | A CineFix Movie List -    • The Top 10 Sundance Films Of All Time...