Sundance 2025’s Festival Favorite, Slumbering Sales, and the Future Beyond
(2025-02-11, Park City, UT, Special to the USTimes) Sundance Film Festival brought its 2025 event to a close by announcing the winner of its Audience Festival Favorite Award: the documentary, Come See Me in the Good Light, directed by Ryan White, which follows the love story of two poets confronting mortality and living life to the fullest in the face of an incurable diagnosis. Featured in the festival’s premiere category, the film was praised by attendees, lauding its seamless blend of humor and heartbreak.
“Throughout the Festival we saw audiences moved by Andrea Gibson’s and Megan Falley’s journeys in Come See Me in the Good Light,” said Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming. “It speaks to art and love and reminds us what it means to be alive as we face mortality.”
Despite such positive reception, “Good Light” fell victim to a comparatively slow season of dealmaking, a contrast to the bidding wars of years past.
Though exact numbers vary, the number of actual deals struck during the festival (as of this writing) was down by almost half from last year, with less than ten films sold.
What did sell included a body horror feature, Together, by Michael Shanks, picked up by Neon, and a VR-filmed short documentary, The Reality of Hope, by Joe Hunting, which was picked up by Asteria. All are celebrated in their own right, wholly independent of this year’s slow deals market, but that decline in business does speak to a hesitancy rippling through the film industry. There is a heightened sense of caution from US distributors, spurred by a nonstop bombardment of unprecedented events rupturing the status quo of Hollywood, from the 2023 union strikes to last month’s devastating wildfires.
Sundance is looking to the future. January 22 to February 1, 2026 will see a new version of the fest. In-person events will be hosted in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah.
Though speculation rumbles about Sundance soon leaving the state of Utah in 2027, organizers are expresssing excitement and optimism. Eugene Hernandez, director of the Sundance Film Festival and Public Programming, said, “As this year’s Festival comes to a close, we’re already looking ahead to 2026 and what will no doubt be an unforgettable experience!”
