[ot-caption title=”Sundance Film Festival sets the stage for the upcoming year in film. (via Barnaby Dorfman, Flicker)”]

We are only a few weeks into 2016, yet there has already been a plethora of news regarding the film industry. We are currently in the midst of awards season, the Academy Awards controversy has many up in arms, and highly anticipated films like the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caeser! are on the verge of releasing. While all of this commotion is taking place, Sundance Film Festival is currently screening films in the harshly cold city of Park City, Utah.

So far, Sundance has made headlines in relation to two films that have received major buzz since screening. The first film is Manchester by the Sea directed by Kenneth Lonergan, who is probably most known for co-writing Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. The film’s stars are also getting a tremendous amount of praise, with critics calling it a career-defining role for Casey Affleck. While Manchester by the Sea held the spotlight for a few days, the spotlight quickly shifted to Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation. The film received a standing ovation upon its premiere, and has been on critics and viewers minds since watching. The film acquired so much buzz that film distributors quickly took notice, and subsequently found themselves in the most expensive bidding war of Sundance history. Ultimately Birth of a Nation ended up in the hands of Fox Searchlight for a record breaking 17.5 million dollars.

Birth of a Nation is not the only film that has seen major success.  After a tense and extremely competitive bidding war, Amazon acquired the domestic rights for Manchester by the Sea for around ten million dollars. What is even more noteworthy than the high price paid for the film is who the buyer is. Digital platforms such as Amazon have slowly been gaining momentum in the film industry, and deals like this are further solidifying their place among the big studios like Sony, Fox, and Universal. Amazon is not the only streaming company that has secured Sundance films. Netflix also snatched the rights for The Fundamentals of Caring, starring Paul Rudd and Tallulah, starring Ellen Page.

While we Pine Crest students were not able to see the films premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the festival is still an important one that deserves attention, as the films that premiered there are likely to be some of the biggest movies of the year as they begin to release around the country in the coming months.

Sources: IMDB, The Verge, Sundance Institute, Facebook, Oculus, Playstation, Google , Gizmodo, Us Weekly, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire