Yes, you can just go to Sundance. Yes, you will definitely have fun. Yes, you will see celebrities. Yes, you will see movies that may win Oscars or launch the career of your favorite new filmmaker. No, it’s not easy to get there or get around. No, you won’t feel your healthiest while you are there. No, it’s not easy to get into parties.
But that’s the magic and fun of it all – you go to learn to navigate it, so next year is even better. You go because around every corner may be something unexpected for you, something magical and so memorable it brings you back every year.
Most of all, you go for the people. The dozens of interesting, sweet, talented, inspiring and fun people you meet on the plane, at bus stops, waiting in lines, at cafes and lounges, at networking events or in the seat next to you at the cinema. Sundance is the most welcoming festival of all. Although there are some exclusive events, overall Sundance lacks an exclusive air. Everyone wants to connect and stay in touch and relate in genuine ways. From their pioneering inclusion initiatives to the types of people it attracts. Sundance is where the heart of the independent film industry goes to brew their next relationships and projects.
This year, at the last Sundance in Park City, Utah, I was reminded of that magic. And I was reminded of the chaos. What an adventure to – within one weekend – dream and meditate with Academy Award-winner Chloé Zhao, interview one of my Directing sheros, Tamra Davis, meet an actor from one of my favorite Sundance films on the plane, all while surviving freezing, 14 degree weather, bus rides that make you feel like you are in a sardine can, and adapting to the altitude change (for me, nearly 7000 feet above my sea level home in New Orleans!)
Yes, I can’t wait to see what Sundance in Boulder is like.
From Volunteer to Press Bae
My first time at Sundance was in 2019, through volunteering, something I recommend for anyone who does not have the financial means to get there on your own. It’s kind of like summer camp. My team lived and worked together, with some volunteers who had been coming for decades. I was able to see a lot of films, and when I was off shift, explore and learn how the socializing of Sundance worked.
This year, I was invited by Cinema Femme to join their trip with a Press Badge and stay in their cozy cabin! We had so much fun! (check out our Instagram for some awesome recap videos by our festival producer Emily Broderick!). Most of my colleagues were covering films, while I explored the “festing”. It was my goal to get a better understanding of Sundance. How do you get into events? Parties? How do you organize your schedule? How do you network? And guess what – I ended up seeing NO films. NOT ONE.
Because this Sundance, the last one in Park City, was by far the most packed. Getting around and waiting in line for films took lots of extra time. Time I chose to spend at panels, workshops, in lounges and making new friends instead.
And the networking begins…
I think one of the reasons Sundance is so popular is that it requires visiting a magical climate where Christmas hasn’t seemed to end, and we are all in it together dealing with altitude sickness and dry and freezing weather, while trying to look cute and important.
As soon as I got to the gate of my connecting flight in Phoenix, it was clear almost everyone on my flight was going to Sundance. I saw a lively group celebrating and hugging. It turns out they were some filmmakers and actors from The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Jamal Truelove and filmmaker Rippen Sinder were there with the Bay Area Film Night, celebrating 5 years since the film’s premiere, with Jamal doing a talk that weekend on how Sundance changed his life.
I sat down behind them, and giggled with my seatmate who was obviously also going to Sundance. She was filmmaker Kelly Pike, alum of the AFI DWW program. Hours later, I was riding with Kelly and her friends to Park City. That’s Sundance! Make friends on the plane who end up being your ride to the fest!
Lounges and Houses and RSVP Links – Oh My!
So how can you be silly like me and just go to Sundance and not see any films, and barely spend any money? Getting into lounges and parties often just required finding the right RSVP links through friends and research. You didn’t need a festival badge or a special invite. Dozens of corporate brands want to get on your radar, and they take over restaurants, galleries and pop-up their own “lounges” where you can enjoy free coffee, bomb food and free beanies. I learned, thanks to my interview (below) with festival veteran and strategist Jeff Abramson, that these clever activations were started in the 90s by the pioneering arts organization Gen Art.
The first Friday of the festival is the best day to explore the activations on Main Street. It’s busy with excitement in the air, and lounges often have shorter lines and more freebies in stock.
2026 Began with Solidarity
Our magic started on Friday night at the Opening Night reception for The Solidarity House, a collaborative space and activation presented by a growing coalition of purpose-driven media, narrative, and cultural organizations. This space was so warm, humble and welcoming, it became my favorite place at the 2026 Festival. Emily Best, founder of seed&spark asked us all to meet two new strangers tonight, share one of our dreams and offer support.
Later, I was walking by two people talking about filmmaking in the South. “I live in the South!” I chimed in. One was filmmaker Arielle Knight, whose short film The Boys and the Bees not only premiered at Sundance, but later won the Non-Fiction Short Film Jury Award. Arielle and I had a deep conversation about finding that feeling in your heart when you are making work that is completely aligned with your dreams. We shared tears. She made my night. This is the networking that isn’t networking, it’s these chances to relate and find inspiration among new peers.
On Saturday, I returned to The Solidarity House for a panel called “Who Stewards the Future”, where discussions led to the ethics of AI being in our hands. I had a thought during the panel about how grateful I was to be in that room, at Sundance, knowing that conversations like this are the seeds that shape our future.
Afterwards, I met a living legend, Caren Spruch from Planned Parenthood. She has worked since the 90s to support filmmakers in portraying abortion and other reproductive health issues on screen in ways that are accurate and handled with care, while also encouraging celebrities in the industry to publicly support Planned Parenthood and its mission. She sweetly gave me a special magnet pin usually saved for her celebrity clients, that says “Artists for Planned Parenthood”.
Only at Sundance.
The Solidarity Continued
From there, I went back to Main Street to the Acura House of Energy for a panel hosted by Indigenous House, a recently launched media platform and lifestyle brand taking a forward-looking and bold approach to storytelling, culture, and commerce through a celebration of Indigenous voices and creators. They have launched a new YouTube channel and podcast series by Native creators. I was inspired to hear about work by activist and podcast host Jade Begay, chef Claudia Serrato, and Adam Piron, Director of the Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program, whose labs and fellowships have empowered Native voices in cinema today. You can check out Indigenous House’s YouTube channel at: youtube.com/@indigenoushouse
Some Real Life Networking
Saturday continued to be full of warm and welcoming spaces. I signed up for an actual structured networking event hosted by Heavy Shovel Productions, where for a reasonably priced ticket, you are interviewed and paired with three creatives at a bustling networking event that aims to connect you with peers you could collaborate with and learn from. I was impressed with how fun it was and how well it worked. Especially since my first match was a sweet young filmmaker named Ella Glasscock, who was working on a project with the same themes as a script I’m working on. If you plan to go to Sundance in the future and feel you struggle with networking, I’d really recommend following Heavy Shovel!
I also had the pleasure of being invited to the long-standing SAGIndie Filmmakers Brunch, which celebrated their last events in Park City before the move to Boulder. I met some lovely filmmakers, producers and programmers who continued the warm and welcoming vibes I’d felt the whole festival. SAGIndie has a wonderful team who aim to empower independent filmmakers with the tools they need for success, and that support carried into this lovely morning event.
Tamra Davis thinks I am cool!
The most special treat of Sundance could be meeting your idols, and I was lucky enough to not only meet one of mine, but interview her. Director Tamra Davis defined the look of music videos in the 90s and showed us that women can direct comedy box office hits. She made over 150 music videos and directed films like Billy Madison, Half Baked, Crossroads and the wonderful documentary Jean Michel-Basquiat: The Radiant Child.
She had a new documentary premiere at Sundance called The Best Summer, that is a superfun time capsule of a music festival she filmed in the 90s, with early interviews and performances with Kathleen Hanna, Beck, Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys and more. She discovered the footage in her storage after evacuating during the wildfires in Los Angeles in 2025 and decided to cut it together for the world. She talked about how cool it was that she was just one girl with a camera, who now has her film premiering at Sundance.
When I met up with her in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel, she said “You’re so cool!” And SHE is so cool! We spoke about what she has learned about Directing and she offered generous advice for our emerging filmmaker readers.
Look out for my article on Tamra Davis for Cinema Femme this spring!
Dreaming with Chloé Zhao
The warmth and magic of Sundance culminated for me on Sunday morning, at the most wonderfully unique experience I’ve ever had at a festival. Filmmaker Chloé Zhao brought some of her methods used in the making of the Oscar-nominated masterpiece Hamnet to a lucky group of 250 festival attendees, hosted with creative dreamwork specialist Kim Gillingham.
The event description stated “Together, Chloé and Kim will open a space for listening: to dreams, the body, and the subtle inner movements that often guide creative work before it has language. The session will include gentle prompts, guided exercises, and ways for participants to engage with their own inner images and intuitions. Chloé will reflect on how listening inward has informed her creative life, while Kim brings decades of experience helping artists work with dreams as a source of renewal, meaning, and direction. Designed for the 2026 Sundance Film Festival community, the morning is meant to be an opportunity to reconnect with imagination, one another, and the quieter tools that sustain creative work over time.”
Chloé shared how during the first 10 years of her career, she felt she was working in the “horizontal plane” – who to meet, where to go, what to do. Then after she made Eternals, she felt drawn to work in the “vertical plane” – to explore the light and spirit above, and also the darkness below, that we often want to ignore. She told us “the creative work you do is sacred”. After being connected to Kim Gillingham through Jessie Buckley, Chloé began integrating creative dreamwork into the making of Hamnet, eventually having the whole cast, most of the crew and hundreds of extras do this work together. It allowed Hamnet to hold a raw power that has rarely been seen this deeply in cinema.
We were asked before we entered the room, a huge open space called The Shop, to practice being calm and quiet as we entered. There were yoga mats and chairs set up in a half circle, facing an altar, with Chloé resting as we entered. I was especially moved right away by the sweetness of the organizers doing their best to fit as many people as possible in the room. We all scooted our mats forward to make more space.
We were guided through an indescribable experience that felt like a mix of guided meditation, visualization, and therapy in a personal and private way, while being in a room with hundreds of others sharing the same experience. We cried and laughed and felt seen. I was surprised at how I went from a feeling of introversion to extroversion with such ease through Kim’s guidance. We had a sharing session at the end where many spoke and asked questions about the experience.
And I was different after this experience. Not only did I find some of my own personal healing, I was shown what could be possible as a Director, that you can bring deep and meaningful work to your collaborators with the intention of creating authenticity in your craft, while letting creative work heal and evolve you. A message Chloé said she continually receives that she wanted to share with us was “don’t be casual”.
I spoke with producer and strategist Jeffrey Abramson, on the intention and impact behind the event:
“Chloé has a deep love for Sundance as a filmmaker who has been supported by the festival. It was really important to her to do something that was open to the public with no hierarchy for access, and that people who felt compelled by the concept could come in and participate.”
For Jeff, who is the Deputy Director of Bridge Entertainment Labs, the collaboration felt very serendipitous. After attending Sundance for 33 years in various capacities, he had been looking for something meaningful that spoke to the core values of the festival and reconnected people to the natural setting of Park City, something that could serve as “an antidote or alternative to the late-night parties” and ground people during a transition year as the festival looks toward its future in Boulder.
The session was built for 150 people and ultimately accommodated 250. One reaction that especially stayed with him was hearing attendees describe it as “one of the best non-film premiere experiences they’ve had at the festival,” which meant a great deal to him. For him, what Chloé is doing is “bringing us back to the center of what this art form is meant to be as opposed to the commodity and the business of it.”
It may sound dramatic … but this method feels like an evolutionary moment in filmmaking, something we will look back on decades from now and say that we were there, for one of the first public workshops of Dreams and Creative Embodiment. I thank Chloé, Kim, Jeff and their wonderful team who dreamt and created this experience for us.
The Last Dance
There’s a party for everyone at Sundance, whether you’re a film student and it’s your first time at the festival or you’re an A-list celebrity who’s been going for decades. We spent our last night at the festival shaking our booties off at the after-party for Josephine Decker’s new film Chasing Summer, hosted at the Acura Energy Lounge with the awesome DJ Cardi. It was non-stop dancing and free drinks, with little breaks we would take outside to actually cool off in the freezing air. My Cinema Femme babes, Anna, Emily and Celia joined me, and my friends, filmmaker Victoria Geil and producer (and film fest legend) Milan Chakraborty showed up and we all danced the night away.
The music ranged across genres we all loved, and he even took my request for my favorite film festival tune to dance to: “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer (which I also danced to at the Venice Film Festival, as highlighted in my last article). The party culminated in the joy of us all dancing to “Last Dance” by Donna Summer. The last dance at the last Sundance in Park City. The perfect way to celebrate the 45 years since Robert Redford first began the Sundance Institute in this beautiful part of Utah.
In the midst of our delight and dancing, I had a feeling this was far from the last dance.
So in such a short weekend, Sundance had many magical moments for me, which are still buzzing in my heart. But…magic must be balanced with chaos. And do I have a chaotic story to entertain you and close out my article, of one of the craziest bus rides of my life.
“Don’t even try the front, Queen!”
There was a free party Friday night hosted by Antigravity Academy at a local restaurant. We found a table and had dinner, running into Cinema Femme Short Film Festival alum Brittany Young, which made our night.
After the crowds and long wait, Anna and I were ready to go. It was only 11pm, we could be in bed cozy by midnight. We looked up a rideshare, that morning it had been $14. But now, it was $68!! But I had an idea, let’s take a bus to the Kimball Junction Station, which is the main transit hub on the edge of Park City. It’s closer to our condo. Brilliant. Okay first let’s study the bus schedules, we need the 101 and it’s coming soon! We got outside into the freezing cold and found the bus stop.
So we waited, and waited, and a crowd of about seven of us Sundancers gathered. Including one local who was both helpful and held the patience of someone whose town has been invaded by 85,000 cinephiles. We befriended everyone, including our new friends of the night, filmmakers Nimco Sheikhaden and Faiza Omar, two New Yorkers who happened to be staying near us.
Finally we checked again, and the rideshare was down to $45. Split between four people wasn’t so bad, let’s do it. So Anna ordered it. Then just 3 minutes later, our bus showed up! Cancel it!
Oh, what a mistake that was. This bus was stuffed to the windows with festival goers. How could we all fit? But our New Yorkers came to the rescue. “Get on the bus! We’re from New York and have done worse than this! Everyone get on!” We pushed and pushed our way in through the back door. Did I mention ALL the buses in Park City are free? Thankful for that. The doors slid shut, almost closing on Anna. But she was okay, I was okay. And we were face to face with strangers as if we were about to hug. I didn’t even need to hold on, because I was being held up by all these bodies.
We came to a bus stop. The New Yorker took charge and yelled “Is anyone getting off this bus!?” Nobody. “Okay y’all at this stop, none of you are getting on! Don’t even try the front, Queen, there is NO room for you!”
We moved on to the next stop. One lone man waited. The New Yorker yelled again and 4 girls got off the bus, phew. The man shoved himself into our crowd. He looked familiar, it was Todd from Eventive. The ticketing platform for Sundance, which Cinema Femme also used at our 2025 festival. We all know him as “Todd from Eventive” because that’s his name on his email. As I started talking to him, another voice rang out, “Is Todd from Eventive on this bus?” We had a celebrity on the bus!
As we finally made it to Kimball Junction, we could breath again as the bus cleared out. But not for long. A transit worker got on with a rag and threw it towards the back of the bus. Anna and I looked towards it as we stepped off. Yep – somebody had puked. That poor soul. I don’t blame them. The worst part was, we looked at it. “Why did we look at it!?” Anna yelled.
The best part was that we kept seeing our friends from the bus adventure over the rest of the festival. “That crazy bus ride!” We would yell. Sundance always delivers experiences to bring us together.
and finally.. confidence
And to balance out the transportation chaos, let me tell you how it’s done right. Just two days after the bus expedition, two of my friends got into town with a colleague who had been going to Sundance for decades. They picked me up in his rental car from a theatre on the edge of town, and we drove to Main Street. There were blockades everywhere, allowing only residents in to park in the surrounding neighborhoods. Knowing exactly what he was doing, he pulled up and said: “Hi officer, I live on King Road.” with all the confidence in the world. Without a blink and even seeming a little intimidated, the officer waved us through. We all giggled as he passed King Road, “I actually did stay there one year.”
As Main Street was blocked off for pedestrians, he weaved through the side streets around it, pulling in and out of the small town parking lots, checking the parking signs. We rolled right past the Acura Energy Lounge, which was glowing and popping with another nightly party. He pulled into a lot that I recognized as the location for the Little Miss Sunshine pop-up from the weekend, which had packed up and left no trace. There was a perfect parking spot, just for us. So we parked there, and waltzed on to Main Street, enjoying a group dinner together and getting to know each other. That’s how you Sundance.
Until next time
“This whole experience has felt like serendipity” My colleague Matt Fagerholm said as we reflected on the magic of the weekend (You can read about his first Sundance here). The best part is that we only had a small taste of the hundreds of films, panels, parties, gatherings, laughs, tears, conversations and dances that are alive and fill every minute of the Sundance Film Festival. It would take a lifetime to experience it all, and I’m up for that challenge. Cheers to everyone I met, cheers to all who made it happen, and cheers to my Cinema Femme family.
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Veronica Miles is a filmmaker, traveler and consultant who is based in New Orleans.
IG @veronicalm // veronicamiles.com
Read her previous article: Spritz & Sofia: My First Venice Film Festival
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