This Was the First Post-Studio Sundance Film Festival

After spending six days at the last Sundance Film Festival in Park City, here’s my promise: This article won’t waste time on the past or projecting the future. Like many fun things, nostalgia can be toxic — and we’ll find out about Boulder soon enough.

I want to tell you about changes I saw in real time. Yes, Sundance had the first bidding war in forever. This also was the first Sundance where not only were acquisitions slow, but also no one was surprised. And creators came to the festival not because brands hired them but because they wanted to be part of it.

Brand marketers talking like distributors. Creators talking like filmmakers. Filmmakers talking like startups. You could feel the industry trying to renegotiate who does what and why.

Here’s what that looked like on the ground.

I.



At the Sundance-adjacent Brand Storytelling, someone had the guts to ask the question of 2026.

It was at a lunch sponsored by vertical drama powerhouse ReelShort, so it’s me and a boardroom full of consumer marketing execs and agencies. After a couple of ReelShort execs talked about the company, this was the first question: “How are you looking to engage with…” He cut himself off and began again.

“To put it another way, you’ve got a room full of brands. Why are we here?” It got a few laughs and the conversation continued, but the question was real.

(Almost) everyone knows that nothing in entertainment and media works how it used to and there is no back to normal, but we’ve reached the point where all factions — filmmakers, producers, platforms, brands, distributors, creators, financiers, marketers — are staring at each other as they try to figure out what everyone is supposed to do.

That question took a long time to get here and will take even longer to be answered, but asking it out loud means finally getting down to the business of figuring out how this is going to work.

II.

Kahlil Greene is a content creator known as the Gen Z historian, with over 1M followers across his own TikTok and Instagram channels. In 2023 he received a Peabody Award for “The Hidden History of Racism in New York City,” initiating the organization’s recognition of social media. 



Kahlil Greene and Ariel Viera accept the Peabody Award for “The Hidden History of Racism in NYC” during the 2024 Peabody Awards at Beverly Wilshire. (Photo Charley Gallay/Getty Images)Getty Images for Peabody Awards

Talking to him at a UTA party (the agency reps him), Greene sounded a lot like a lot of people at their first Sundance. “I’m actually getting academic conversations that feel artsy, that are about film theory,” he said over the din. “I feel like I’m back in a classroom and that’s really enlightening. I feel like I’ve never had a conversation like that at South By.”


Like other creators, he has bigger ambitions. “I am ready to upgrade or at least expand into longer-form content,” he said. “I want my work to feel like it’s actually cinematic, that it has some of the qualities of the documentaries here at Sundance. I’m learning a lot from the people here, taking information from them, and I feel like I’m going to become a better artist by the time I’m done.”


However, in one key aspect he’s well ahead of his role models: He already has an audience. 


“It’s weird because I think as much as I’m learning from them, they’re all super curious about my world,” Greene said. “Not only for storytelling, but definitely for marketing and advertising. A lot of them have been in the game for years, and they’re having their — I don’t know, distributors or agencies, whatever it’s called — tell ’em that they need to get social media to advertise their film. And content creators like myself are getting production companies to fund them when they’ve never made a movie in their life. 


“Right now content creators do have the edge in terms of the market and the industry,” he said. “I don’t know, it feels weird. I guess maybe I’m a villain to some of them, but I feel like a friend. We know how to make something that’s engaging on social media that’s engaging to the young people.”


He also acknowledged a double-edged sword. A friend admitted “they have a hard time paying attention to actual full-length movies or documentaries, and it’s because we grew up in a TikTok generation,” Greene said. “The attention span, the actual brain chemistry is different. And to make something that enough young people can watch, it’s completely different science than making movies in the past.”

III. 



On my way into a Filmstack meetup I ran into Creator Camp co-founder Max Reisinger and chief creative officer Christina Colina. At 22, Reisinger is a retired YouTuber who now oversees a network of more than 300 creators who want to make films. We met over Zoom a few months ago when I wrote about his distribution arm, Camp Studios, and the release of its first film,“Two Sleepy People.” It’s now in theaters across the country through his partnership with John Fithian’s ATTEND.


“Two Sleepy People”

So, I was surprised to learn that this was their first Sundance. Even more surprised: It was their first film festival. (Not even Creator Camp’s hometown festival, SXSW.) Most surprising: This was not at all unusual.


“I’m meeting a lot more creators here [for whom] it’s also their first film festival,” he said as we tried to find space on the coatrack. “But they’re coming in with so much more momentum and audience and millions of followers. It’s interesting seeing them talk to people who are more traditional. They’re saying, ‘I’ve been trying to pitch my idea by movie for the last five years’ and the creators are like, ‘Oh, I’ve been getting millions of views and I’ve posted a hundred things in the last few months.’ That sort of intersection is really fascinating.”  


“Two Sleepy People” marketing relied solely on organic social media. Reisinger said he doesn’t see that as the answer for everyone, but it points to a middle ground. 


“The brands are now starting to search for the first time: ‘Oh, maybe we might start micro dramas.’ We might start getting more entertainment from creators,” he said. “And maybe movies aren’t fully creator led, but they have more of this internet push. A lot of people have been asking us, ‘So how did you do it? How did you get so many theaters to say yes’?”


Part of it, he said, was the same mechanism that Markiplier used to get “Iron Lung” on more than 4,000 screens: It’s easier to sell when you demonstrate demand. Creator Camp drew on its network to four-wall “Two Sleepy People” in a few theaters to prove momentum for a limited release, which then allowed for a wider run.


Reisinger said they also asked “completely different questions from what I think the traditional filmmaker might.” Rather than focus on “Who will distribute my movie?”, Creator Camp interrogated the distribution game itself. 


“The questions were like, ‘How do we get the audience involved and what do they care about? What do they want?” Colina said. “I think maybe the perspective shift is including [theaters] from day one versus it being an afterthought.”  

IV.

From the Filmstack event I headed to an interview with Pablo and Juan Larrain about their just-launched distribution platform, Pijama. The brothers are already partners in Fabula, which has produced more than 60 films (including Sebastian Lelio’s 2018 Oscar winner “A Fantastic Woman” and Pablo’s own award-winning “Jackie” and “No”). Because they believe current systems leave most cinema unseen, they built a streaming platform that gives independent films a global path to audiences.

For a $100 upload, Pijama allows filmmakers to control pricing, subtitles, and territories, and returns 80 percent of revenue to the filmmakers. It doesn’t take any rights.

Inspiration to build Pijama came after premiering Lelio’s “The Wave” at Cannes last spring. His prior films found an audience in the UK, but for this one Fabula couldn’t make a deal.

Avril Aurora, Lola Bravo, Sebastián Lelio, Daniela López and Paulina Cortés pose during the “La Ola” (La Vague/The Wave) photocall at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2025 (Photo Victor Boyko/Getty Images)Getty Images

“In the last 10 years, it changed so dramatically,” Pablo said. “I don’t see any reason why it won’t change at least as fast in the following 10 years. We want to be part of that change because we see there’s something that is kind of not working.”

By that he means traditional distribution — the kind where distributors say, “There’s not a market for this,” but what they really mean is there’s no market they know how to reach in sufficient numbers to turn a profit. And, fair enough. That doesn’t mean there’s not an audience.

Juan related the story of a friend’s Chilean golf documentary. The filmmaker knew it was niche, but he also knew how to find the audience and fund a campaign. What he didn’t know was where to tell them to go.

“He was like, ‘How can I monetize that? Maybe the audience is a thousand, 5,000, I don’t know. But that 5,000 will access something they want to watch.’ It’s a gap that needs to be filled somewhere [and] Pijama is a bridge that will allow producers to connect with the audiences and monetize it.”

I mentioned the work being done by Creator Camp and Markiplier. The brothers’ eyes grew wide.

“Whoa,” Pablo said. Juan asked, “After the theatrical window, how will they distribute the films?” I said I wasn’t sure.

Finally, I asked if their peers perceived the same changes they did.

“It’s a very good question. I’m not sure how to answer,” Pablo said. “It’s hard to describe where it is. Maybe younger people, the people that you’re mentioning, they see better.”

Before I left, they made sure to ask if I’d connect them with Markiplier and Max. (I did.)

V.

However accidental, Sundance moving to Boulder could not have come at a better time. (Nothing against Park City or even pro-Boulder.) All economies are changing — creator, attention, entertainment, indie film, not to mention the U.S. and the world — and I don’t think Sundance stands a chance of changing with them without a physical shift.

When I spoke at the Sundance Institute’s Future Models salon last Monday, I looked at the audience and saw faces I’ve known across 24 festivals. That’s powerful and little surreal. After more than 40 years, Sundance’s memories are so potent that we describe them with backward-looking words like dream, myth, and legend.

In this moment, that’s dangerous. Not only is looking back a great way to ensure you won’t move forward (at least not without running into something sharp or heavy), but it doesn’t acknowledge the world we’re in now.

If Sundance remained in Park City, any hange would be hobbled by comparison (aka thief of joy) and memory. That’s not to say we won’t have those stumbling blocks in Colorado — I can write those headlines now — but it’s harder to remain dewy eyed while building something new.

Festival director Eugene Hernandez also spoke at Future Models and said something I loved. “We’re not moving Sundance out of Park City,” he said. “We’re building a festival in Boulder. It’s our mission and values that move with us wherever we go.”

I believe in that with all my heart and know there’s no better leader than Eug to take us there. My hope is that Sundance will be able to release enough of the past so it can focus on our changing future. It’s happening with or without Sundance, but it still has the window to help lead us through it.