Jill Soloway
Unlike most of the other names here, Jill Soloway both had a long career, and has had her greatest subsequent success, in another medium, in this case television. But it doesn’t change the fact that Sundance helped make Soloway from a prolific behind-the-scenes writer to an acclaimed filmmaker and showrunner. Starting her career as a playwright and sometime performer, Soloway racked up early credits on TV series including “The Steve Harvey Show” before landing as a writer and eventual executive producer on “Six Feet Under.” She’d go on to showrun “The United States Of Tara” and “How To Make It In America,” but broke into movies thanks to the Sundance selection of short “Una Hora Por Favora” and feature “Afternoon Delight,” starring Kathryn Hahn as a suburban mom who befriends a sex worker (Juno Temple). It won Soloway the Directing Award at Sundance; a year later, the pilot for her show “Transparent,” the best thing on TV right now, arrived on Amazon.
Kevin Smith
Sundance has launched better filmmakers than Kevin Smith (hundreds of them, probably). But it hasn’t launched many bigger personalities, or more people who’ve made the idea of making a guerilla movie and having it become a phenomenon truly accessible. Inspired by Richard Linklater’s “Slacker,” Smith maxed out a dozen credit cards to raise the $30,000 he needed to make “Clerks,” a smart-mouthed, sweary, black-and-white comedy that proved instantly quotable. Premiering at Sundance in 1994, the film was an immediate hit, winning the Filmmakers Trophy and being bought straight after by Harvey Weinstein, who turned it into a crossover hit. Though he’s never had a giant hit, Smith went on to become one of the most recognizable filmmakers around, a brand name unto himself who had some modest successes with films like ‘Chasing Amy” and “Dogma.” Filmmaking has come second to his podcast empire in recent years, but there’s no denying that Smith’s success had a seismic impact in the indie world.
Quentin Tarantino
Well, obviously. Though he only ever had one movie at the festival, Tarantino’s been inextricably linked with Sundance from day one. The former video-store employee made his directorial debut after befriending producer Lawrence Bender, gaining backing for the budget with the help of filmmaker Monte Hellman, and landing Harvey Keitel to star. The movie exploded at Sundance in 1992, and though it won no awards, its quotable, ultra-cool take on the heist flick made it the most talked about film of the festival, and a breath of fresh air in the indie world. Box office was a little underwhelming (it made twice as much in the U.K. as it did in the U.S.), but Tarantino was immediately a hot property, with his screenplay “True Romance” becoming a hit the next year, and “Pulp Fiction” winning the Palme D’Or the year after. The rest is history, a history marked by countless imitators, none of whom have come anywhere near the likes of Tarantino’s singular work.
Colin Trevorrow
It might seem as though few filmmakers have had such meteoric rises as Colin Trevorrow, but his success was a long time in the making. Graduating from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1999, Trevorrow worked mostly as a screenwriter through the 2000s (he helmed a little-seen documentary called “Reality Show”), before making his feature debut with “Safety Not Guaranteed.” Inspired by a classfied ad, it follows a pair of journalists who investigate an eccentric man who claims to have invented a time machine. Starring Mark Duplass, Aubrey Plaza and Jake Johnson, the film proved to be a crowdpleaser at Sundance 2012, and it was clear big things were coming for Trevorrow. But few knew how big: Thanks to the patronage of Brad Bird and, later, Steven Spielberg, Trevorrow landed the job of directing “Jurassic World,” the reboot of the dinosaur franchise, and turned out what was, at least for a brief time, the third-biggest movie in history. He’s returned to the indie world for next year’s “The Book Of Henry,” but will go blockbuster again in 2019 for “Star Wars: Episode IX.”
Mario Van Peebles
As the son of Melvin Van Peebles, who all but created African-American independent film with “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” actor-director Mario Van Peebles had some big shoes to step into. While he’s now mostly a TV director (though he returns to features shortly, in a way, with the Nicolas Cage-starring “U.S.S. Indianapolis”), Van Peebles became a big name in the 1990s thanks to the success of “New Jack City,” which premiered at Sundance. After appearing in films like “Heartbreak Ridge” and “Jaws: The Revenge,” Van Peebles began directing on “21 Jump Street” before Warner Bros financed his feature debut, which sees Ice-T as a cop trying to bring down Wesley Snipes’ drug dealer, and it’s a smart, serious picture with real thrills and some strong performances, even if it dips into cliché. The movie was a hit when it opened a couple of months after its Sundance premiere, and Van Peebles followed it up with the underrated “Posse” and “Panther,” though most of his subsequent movies, bar his charming tribute to his dad with “BAADASSSSS!, weren’t of the same standard.
Honorable Mentions: As you might imagine, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to filmmakers who exploded at Sundance. For one, we excluded most of those whose debuts had already premiered elsewhere, but did play Sundance at some point — their numbers include Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Mark Caro with “Delicatessen;” Guillermo Del Toro with “Cronos;” the Coens with “Blood Simple;” Jim Jarmusch with “Stranger Than Paradise;” James Wan with “Saw;” Richard Linklater, whose “Slacker” had actually opened in a very limited way in the summer of 1990 but found a wider audience thanks to its Sundance selection; Jane Campion with “Sweetie;” Christopher Nolan, whose first film “Following” actually played Slamdance, and whose “Memento” only hit Park City after a Venice premiere the year before; Guy Ritchie with “Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels;” Sofia Coppola with “The Virgin Suicides;” Jonathan Glazer with “Sexy Beast;” Jason Reitman with “Thank You For Smoking;” and Sarah Polley with “Away From Her.”
We also opted not to include Wes Anderson, whose short version of “Bottle Rocket” played the festival, only for the feature version not to be picked a few years later. Big-name directors we came to close to including, but ultimately didn’t, include the likes of James Mangold (who broke through with “Heavy,” 1995), Tom McCarthy (“The Station Agent,” 2003), Lynn Shelton (“Humpday,” 2009), Taika Waititi (“Eagle Vs. Shark,” 2007), Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count On Me,” 2000), Tom Hooper (“Longford,” 2007), Rupert Wyatt (“The Escapist,” 2008), Marc Webb (“(500) Days Of Summer,” 2009) and Marc Forster (“Everything Put Together,” 2000).
That’s not to forget David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom,” 2010), James Ponsoldt (“Smashed,” 2012), Atom Egoyan (“Next Of Kin,” 1985), Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan,” 1990), Dee Rees (“Pariah,” 2011), John Cameron Mitchell (“Hedwig And The Angry Inch,” 2001), Kelly Reichardt (“Rivers Of Grass,” 1994), Rebecca Miller (“Angela,” 1995), Todd Field (“In The Bedroom,” 2001), Duncan Jones (“Moon,” 2009), J.C. Chandor (“Margin Call,” 2011), Ed Burns (“The Brothers McMullen,” 1995), Walter Salles (“Central Station,” 1996) and Damien Chazelle (“Whiplash,” 2014).
And, of course, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris (“Little Miss Sunshine,” 2006), Sean Durkin (“Martha Marcy May Marlene,” 2011), Richard Kelly (“Donnie Darko,” 2001), Neil LaBute (“In The Company Of Men,“ 1997), Benh Zeitlin (“Beasts Of The Southern Wild”), Shane Carruth (“Primer,” 2004), David Wain (“Wet Hot American Summer,” 2001), Hal Hartley (“The Unbelievable Truth,” 1989), Allison Anders (“Gas, Food, Lodging,” 1992), Gregg Araki (“The Living End,” 1992), Mary Harron (“I Shot Andy Warhol,” 1996), Vincent Gallo (“Buffalo ’66,” 1998), Gavin O’Connor (“Tumbleweeds,” 1999) and Karyn Kusama (“Girlfight,” 2000).
And finally, there’s Miguel Arteta (“Chuck & Buck,” 2000), Joe Carnahan (“Narc,” 2002), Debra Granik (“Down To The Bone,” 2004), Mike Mills (“Thumbsucker,” 2005), Lance Hammer (“Ballast,” 2008), Jonathan Levine (“The Wackness,” 2008), Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine,” 2010), Drake Doremus (“Douchebag,” 2010), Lake Bell (“In A World,” 2013), Jordan Vogt-Roberts (“The Kings Of Summer,” 2013), Jennifer Kent (“The Babadook,” 2014), Marielle Heller (“Diary Of A Teenage Girl,” 2015), Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges,” 2008), Nacho Vigalondo (“Timecrimes,” 2008), Glenn Ficarra & John Requa (“I Love You Phillip Morris,” 2009), Oren Moverman (“The Messenger,” 2009) and Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Who Walks Home Alone At Night,” 2014). Anyone else we missed? Let us know in the comments.