Sundance 2023: The Winner Takes It All

What do you learn from only watching festival prizewinners?

At the end of January, cinephiles reconvened in Sundance for the first time since 2020 to get a sneak peek at some of 2023’s most promising upstart indie titles. The festival is notably one of the few organizations that still maintains some semblance of an online event for critics and fans alike, a commendable commitment to accessibility. It’s not everything — big studios like A24, for example, kept their titles off the streaming platform ahead of theatrical releases. But for any of the competition sections, all titles had to agree to be on the virtual platform.

I “attended” this year’s festival as just a normal viewer, forking over a reasonable amount of money for a “winner’s package” that gave me access to eight films in the film’s second weekend that won some sort of prize. What does one gain from only seeing the cream of the crop?¹

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