Christopher Nolan, Celine Song and Maite Alberdi have been set as award recipients for the opening night gala of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival (January 18-28).
Nolan, whose breakthrough film Memento screened at Sundance in 2001 and won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, will receive the first ever Sundance Institute Trailblazer Award. Song, whose first feature as a writer/director
PastLives premiered this year at Sundance, and is currently a contender for awards, will receive the Vanguard Award for Fiction. Alberdi will receive the Vanguard Award for Nonfiction. He was at Sundance with
The Mole Agent in 2020 and again this year, with World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize-winning The Eternal Memory. The awards will be given at Sundance’s Opening Night Gala: Celebrate 40 Years on January 18, at the DeJoria Center, Utah. The annual festival opening gala raises money for the nonprofit Sundance Institute, which supports independent artists with grants, labs and public programming throughout the year. Sundance institute CEO Joana Vicente said: “As the festival enters its forty-fifth year, it’s an honour to recognize Christopher Nolan as a prodigious filmmaker whose singular talents and remarkable body work have made him a respected filmmaker of our time. We are excited to highlight the unique voices of Celine and Maite – storytellers that we have supported and deeply believed in. “All three of these storytellers embody Sundance’s core values.”
