The Sundance Film Festival is where indie film discoveries are made, and in some cases, it’s where a filmmaker becomes a new sensation overnight. Some of the most iconic indie filmmakers working today have Sundance to thank for launching their careers. In some cases, Sundance has even led to a major blockbuster. Here are 15 directors who broke out big time in Park City.
Steven Soderbergh effectively launched a new generation of indie filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival with the premiere of “sex, lies, and videotape” in 1989. Many people point to Cannes when they think about Soderbergh’s debut, as it famously won the Palme d’Or, but it actually would have never made it there without the praise it earned in Sundance, where it won the Audience Award.
Before Quentin Tarantino exploded onto the film scene at the 1992 festival, he was gaining some big name friends thanks to a screenplay for a heavy-on-dialogue heist film called “Reservoir Dogs.” The script, written in just three-and-a-half weeks, was so good that producer Lawrence Bender and star Harvey Keitel helped fund its $1 million budget. The film shocked Park City to its core, and although it didn’t win a single award, it was the only movie people just couldn’t stop talking about. At the dawn of the 1990s indie film boom, Tarantino put Sundance back on the map.
Lee Daniels wasn’t exactly a complete unknown when he went to Sundance in 2009 with “Precious.” He had already produced the Oscar-winning “Monster’s Ball” and directed the crime drama “Shadowboxer,” but his career would explode that year in Park City, where “Precious” won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. It would go on to earn six Oscar nominations, including Daniels for Best Director.
Sundance loves a good family drama that mixes comedy with real human emotion, and that’s exactly what David O. Russell delivered in his breakout “Spanking the Monkey,” albeit with a very dark and strange incestuous twist. The movie was made for only $200,000 (O. Russell received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts) and actually marked his third movie to screen at Sundance, following two short films in 1987 and 1989. This was the trip that sealed the deal, however, and “Spanking the Money” took home the Audience Award.
With “El Mariachi,” Robert Rodruiguez proved you don’t need a big budget to make an iconic indie film, you just need the kind of explosive energy that will drive people crazy. Made for only $7,000, “El Mariachi” was all the buzz at Sundance in 1992, winning the Audience Award on its way to earning just over $1 million at the box office.
Before Catherine Hardwicke gained global recognition for “Twilight,” she launched her filmmaking career at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival with the bracingly raw mother-daughter drama “Thirteen.” The film’s blunt subject matter and explicit dialogue made it a controversial title, but Hardwicke’s master control of her actors won her the Dramatic Directing Award. The drama took Holly Hunter all the way to the Oscars with a nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and it put Hardwicke on the radar of every indie movie lover.
Many of the pioneering filmmakers of the 1990s indie film movement were born at Sundance, and Richard Linklater is no exception. His scrappy, extremely talky debut “Slacker” premiered at the 1991 festival and introduced a new kind of voice to the American film scene. Linklater’s plotless, entirely character-driven movie was made for only $23,000, and it proved how dynamically you could turn low-fi moviemaking into real art.
Darren Aronofsky was only 29 years old when he became the biggest new talent to emerge from the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. He managed to scrap together from friends and family a $60,000 budget for his debut feature, the black-and-white “Pi.” The movie’s grandiose themes and oppressive nature wasn’t expected to create the kind of universal buzz it did, and Sundance ended up awarding Aronofsky the Best Director prize.
We talk a lot about the Sundance Labs here at IndieWire, and for proof at how beneficial they can be for a filmmaker’s career, look no further than Paul Thomas Anderson. An aspiring filmmaker throughout college, PTA got accepted into the Sundance Lab off the strength of his college short film, “Coffee and Cigarettes.” At Sundance, he worked on expanding the short film into a feature, and thus “Hard Eight” was born and a filmmaker was on his way to becoming a legend.
Sundance has been very kind to Lisa Cholodenko over the years. Her best known film, “The Kids Are All Right,” was the breakout of the 2010 festival, selling to Focus Features for a hefty $4.8 million, and she got her breakout in Park City with “High Art” in 1999. She made the film under the mentorship of Oscar winner Miloš Forman (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), and while it originally premiered at Cannes, it had an even bigger breakout at Sundance, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.
Sundance is where Wes Anderson’s life changed forever. He brought his 16-minute short film “Bottle Rocket” to the 1993 festival, where it gained a passionate group of fans, none bigger than James L. Brooks. The Oscar winner was blown away by Anderson’s movie and agreed to produce the feature adaptation, which would include original stars Luke and Owen Wilson. The feature would be the movie that put all three on the map.
Sundance is where the Coen Brothers emerged as major talents. Their feature debut, “Blood Simple,” became the festival sensation of 1985, with critics noting the influence of such film masters as Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock in the duo’s filmmaking DNA. The picture won the Grand Jury Prize and launched one of the most iconic directing duos in American cinema.
Like Linklater and Rodriguez before him, Kevin Smith broke out at Sundance by proving that a tiny budget is no limitation. “Clerks” was shot for just $27,500 on location at the video store where Smith actually worked, and it’s hugely relatable characters and dialogue made it an instant hit at Sundance. It tied for the Filmmakers Award and, similar to “sex, lies, and videotape,” rode its acclaim all the way to more award wins at the Cannes Film Festival.
Ryan Coogler became one of the hottest new voices in indie film when his feature debut “Fruitvale Station” became the darling of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, winning both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award and selling to The Weinstein Company for $2 million. The acclaim instantly gave Coogler a ticket to the big leagues, and he resurrected the “Rocky” franchise with “Creed” and is now making the Marvel blockbuster “Black Panther.”