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Awards at the Sundance Film Festival will be handed out today for films screened there. This year is the last time it will be held in Park City, Utah. NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports the annual festival had celebrations and protests.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Love melts ICE. Love melts ICE.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Cinephiles and filmmakers at Sundance took to the streets to protest the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by immigration agents in Minnesota.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) Shoot films.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Not people.
DEL BARCO: Shoot films, not people, they chanted. And on the red carpets before their film premieres, some celebrities also condemned ICE. Here's Olivia Wilde.
OLIVIA WILDE: I'm horrified by this string of murders that we are somehow legitimizing and normalizing. And I think Americans are all horrified. It's really difficult to be here and to be celebrating something so joyous and beautiful and positive when we know what's happening on the streets.
DEL BARCO: Wilde directed and co-stars in "The Invite," along with Seth Rogan, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton. The comedy about sex, marriage and partner swapping sparked a 72-hour bidding marathon at the festival. In the end, A24 won the films domestic rights.
EUGENE HERNANDEZ: It was fun to have a film, have an opportunity to have one of those classic Sundance overnight - although in this case, multi-night - bidding war situations.
DEL BARCO: Eugene Hernandez is director of the Sundance Film Festival.
HERNANDEZ: There are always a handful of films that find an immediate reaction with audiences and distributors, but it's part of the festival's lore that goes back decades.
DEL BARCO: There were other buzzy movies at the festival, including Gregg Araki's erotic comedy "I Want Your Sex," which also stars Olivia Wilde and features pop star Charli XCX, who's actually having a moment at Sundance with three films, including a mockumentary called "The Moment."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE MOMENT")
CHARLI XCX: Don't you just think the whole, like, keep having a brat summer thing is a bit cringe?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: It's all cringe.
DEL BARCO: During the festival, Neon landed the distribution rights to the Australian horror film "Leviticus," and Sony Classics acquired "Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!," set in Tokyo's ballroom dance scene. Tennis champ Billie Jean King threw autographed tennis balls to the audience at a screening of a documentary about her, and singer Norah Jones serenaded the audience at the premiere of "Broken English," a film about singer songwriter Marianne Faithfull.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NORAH JONES: (Strumming guitar, singing) As she rode along to Paris with the warm wind in her hair.
DEL BARCO: Sundance also spotlighted the work of up-and-comers like Beth de Araujo, who wrote and directed the thriller "Josephine," about a girl who witnesses a sexual assault in Golden Gate Park. The filmmaker seemed touched by the premiere's rousing standing ovation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BETH DE ARAUJO: Something had happened when I was very young that really haunted me. I decided to take a stab at writing about female fear and just keep it through the eyes of an 8-year-old the entire time.
DEL BARCO: This year's festival also celebrated "Little Miss Sunshine," one of the films that made a splash at Sundance 20 years ago. There was plenty of nostalgia for the festival founded in the 1980s by the late actor/director Robert Redford. Over the years, the festival and the Sundance labs nurtured the careers of independent filmmakers from Steven Soderbergh and Ava DuVernay to this year's Oscar nominees Ryan Coogler and Chloe Zhao. During the festival, they both honored Redford. So did actor Ethan Hawke, who's been going to Sundance since 1994.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ETHAN HAWKE: Robert Redford was himself a consummate artist, a singular actor, a film director of exquisite conviction and vision, a man with passion and understanding of the environment, of our planet who made a difference.
DEL BARCO: The festival Robert Redford named after his character in the film "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid" rides over to another mountaintop next year in Colorado.
Mandalit del Barco, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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