The Grand Hyatt Deer Valley hosted a starry Celebrating Sundance Institute that also honored James Mangold, Cynthia Erivo and filmmakers Sean Wang, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie.

This month, the Sundance Film Festival is once again providing a showcase for independent filmmakers and documentarians from around the world. But that isn't all that Sundance does. "Sunday Morning" goes behind the scenes.

This month, in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, the Sundance Film Festival is once again providing a showcase for independent filmmakers and documentarians from around the world. But that isn't all that Sundance does.

The Sundance Film Festival truly rolled double last year when the picked the honorees for tonight’s Gala fundraiser at the newly opened Grand Hyatt Deer Valley. However, even with newly minted Oscar nominees Cynthia Erivo and James Mangold in the house to receive the Visionary Award and Trailblazer Award respectively,

“Artists are the gatekeepers of the truth,” Satter said during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Gala on Friday night at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley. “We’re civilization’s anchor. We’re the compass for humanity’s consciousness.”

Michelle Satter, the founding director of the non-profit's filmmaker labs, was showered with praise at the festival's annual gala.

As Sundance considers moving out of Utah, the indie film community weighs how much of its identity is rooted in Park City.

While the future home for Sundance, the iconic indie film festival actor Robert Redford helped create, remains up for debate, there’s no argument about the 2025 lineup in Utah. It’s dynamite, and includes a smattering of films with Bay Area ties.

Sundance Institute gave awards to "Wicked" star Cynthia Erivo and "A Complete Unknown" director James Mangold — but the most talk was in praise of Sundance's founding lab director, Michelle Satter.

It's the halfway point of the fest and themes are beginning to emerge — technological detachment, pets — along with stars Dev Patel, Steven Yeun and Rachel Sennott.

They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” goes the common saying, and in some ways, anyone can see why. In today’s world of franchise sequels and nostalgia-baiting reboots of older properties, studios rarely spend big bucks on starry original stories like they used to back in the 1990s.