Doc Talk Podcast Unpacks Crisis Plaguing Film Festivals, Sundance Inviting Bids To Ditch Park City
deadline.comFilm festivals in North America have launched some of the greatest movies ever – whether nonfiction or fiction. Telluride premiered Free Solo, Slumdog Millionaire, and Argo; Sundance debuted sex, lies and videotape, Napoleon Dynamite, An Inconvenient Truth, and this year’s Oscar winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol; the Toronto International Film Festival premiered I Am Not Your Negro and Ray.
The importance of festivals to the industry is beyond question, but many of the most celebrated ones on this continent are facing a moment of crisis.
Post-pandemic financial struggles are plaguing Sundance, TIFF, and Hot Docs among others, and the situation with the latter festival is serious enough that it may have to fold.
Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast digs into the precarious state of film festivals in our latest episode, examining that vital question with guests steeped in the field: Ken Jacobson, executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas and veteran of AFI, and Anne Lai, executive director of SFFilm, which puts on the San Francisco International Film Festival and Doc Stories.
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