The news began to spread through the Sundance film festival on Saturday morning, as people emerged from early screenings or long nights out at the bars on Main Street.
“If you all have not heard what’s going on in Minnesota this morning, someone else was murdered by ICE,” director Ava DuVernay told the audience at a panel on freedom of expression, referring to the shooting that morning of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, by Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) agents in Minneapolis.
By afternoon, many attendees of the independent film festival in Park City, Utah, had seen the footage of Pretti’s murder, the contradictory statements from federal officials and the protests sweeping Minneapolis, the midwestern city roiled by the Trump administration’s deployment of 3,000 federal agents as part of its crackdown on immigration. Some had seen the tweet from Florida congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the first Afro-Cuban and first gen Zer to be elected to Congress, revealing that he was the person punched in the face on Friday evening at a Main Street industry party, by a white man who said Donald Trump would deport him.
The outrage was palpable, but the response, at a traditionally progressive festival known for its innovative films and politically challenging documentaries, was relatively muddled. While some actors and industry figures wore “ICE Out” and “Be Good” pins – a reference to the shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, by ICE agents in Minneapolis on 7 January – many of the premieres, parties and brand-sponsored lounges remained chipper, apolitical zones.
A cognitive dissonance has loomed over the early days of the jam-packed festival – the final edition in red-state Utah before it relocates to Boulder, Colorado next year – as busy attendees struggled to celebrate achievements in independent film while acknowledging the horror seen on their cellphones. “We’re all here getting to celebrate something really beautiful and hopeful in film storytelling,” said Olivia Wilde at the premiere for her film The Invite, a riotous sex comedy involving two long-term couples. “But the world is hurting right now, and this country is hurting. And it’s appalling.”
A handful of actors spoke to a similar ambivalence. “I’m sitting here talking about movies while an illegal army is being mounted against US citizens,” Edward Norton, Wilde’s costar in The Invite, told the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s hard to be somewhere like this and wear the nice outfits and talk about film, when something so ugly is happening right next to us,” Jenna Ortega told reporters at the premiere of art-world satire The Gallerist. But compared to the first Trump administration, when the Hollywood reaction was swift and vocal, the backlash seemed scattered and obligatory.
Sundance does not typically shy away from politics. The festival has a long history of elevating emerging artists of diverse backgrounds, and has become the go-to destination for prestige, politically challenging documentaries; all five Oscar nominees this year premiered here. Last year’s festival, for example, included films on Republican-led book bans in US schools and so-called Stand Your Ground laws in Florida; the year prior premiered War Game, which followed a simulation of a potential government coup by a rogue president, based on the events of January 6.
In years past, activists have harnessed the media’s attention on the premiere US film festival for in-person protests in the town center. At the 2024 festival, a group of around 200 pro-Palestinian protesters, including the Irish-speaking rap trio and festival doc subjects Kneecap, shut down Park City’s bustling Main Street to call attention to Israel’s war in Gaza. The 2017 festival, which took place during the first Trump inauguration, saw its own 8,000-strong Women’s March led by comedian Chelsea Handler and organized by groups including Planned Parenthood and Emily’s List.
In-person protests were less populated this year, though homemade anti-ICE signs and slogans have dotted Main Street. On Sunday evening, about 100 people – including Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood – gathered there for a 10-minute “Sundancers Melt ICE” rally. “The folks who have been unlawfully gunned down in Minnesota – it’s awful,” Wood told Deadline. “Here we are at this film festival that is about bringing people together; it’s about telling stories from all over the world. We’re not divided here; we’re coming together.” Given more time to organize and spread the word, a larger crowd marched down Main on Monday afternoon, carrying “RESIST” banners and chanting “Abolish ICE!”
But for most attendees, conversations about the turmoil and “this current moment” have largely played out in private or at panels and screening Q&As around the ski town. “I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge everything that is happening in Minnesota,” film-maker Kogonada said at a screening of his Hong Kong-set feature, Zi. “I’m a believer in what [Roger] Ebert says that cinema is an empathizing machine. In the darkest time, you hope that art doesn’t feel indulgent but that it deepens our sense of humanity. I feel like more than ever it is important to do that to counter what is happening around the world.”
At the Sunday afternoon premiere of Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, which depicted the British American writer’s arduous recovery from a 2022 stabbing by a 24-year-old Muslim extremist, the festival’s head, Eugene Hernandez, alluded to Pretti’s murder while asking Rushdie and director Alex Gibney about their film’s re-examination of Iran’s 1989 fatwa that called for the author’s death. “I am now beginning to think that the film is here at the right moment,” Rushdie answered. “Maybe all of us now are feeling the risk of violence. All of us are feeling that danger is just around the corner. Maybe this one experience can be a way for people watching the film to think about these larger things.”
References to creeping authoritarianism appeared throughout the festival – “for the authoritarian, culture is the enemy,” Rushdie said after Gibney obliquely referred to Trump – and animated some of the festival’s most politically challenging films, such as The Friend’s House Is Here, an Iranian feature about a collective of underground artists in Tehran that was made in secret from the country’s Islamic regime. Actor Kerry Washington spoke at a panel titled Democracy On the Screen – And On The Line. The African American Policy Forum hosted a panel titled The Story of Us – The New McCarthyism: Why Authoritarians Fear Storytellers, featuring DuVernay, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and Tony-winning actor Kara Young.
As the festival reached its halfway point on Monday, the mood remained, as for much of the country, tense and uncertain, though the show goes on. “It’s really impossible not to talk about what is happening right now and the brutality of ICE and how it has to stop immediately,” Natalie Portman told Variety while doing press for The Gallerist. “But also, there’s a beautiful community that Americans are showing right now.”
“They’re showing up for each other, protecting each other and fighting for their freedom,” Portman added. “It’s a bittersweet moment to celebrate something we’re so proud of on the backdrop of our nation in pain.”
