The Grand Hyatt Deer Valley hosted a starry Celebrating Sundance Institute that also honored James Mangold, Cynthia Erivo and filmmakers Sean Wang, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie.

The Sundance Film Festival catalogue can be overwhelming to navigate, with around 90 feature films playing across 11 days.

The Sundance Film Festival truly rolled double last year when the picked the honorees for tonight’s Gala fundraiser at the newly opened Grand Hyatt Deer Valley. However, even with newly minted Oscar nominees Cynthia Erivo and James Mangold in the house to receive the Visionary Award and Trailblazer Award respectively,

“Artists are the gatekeepers of the truth,” Satter said during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Gala on Friday night at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley. “We’re civilization’s anchor. We’re the compass for humanity’s consciousness.”

Michelle Satter, the founding director of the non-profit's filmmaker labs, was showered with praise at the festival's annual gala.

The Sundance Film Festival, held nearby in Park City for more than 40 years, is credited with catapulting the careers of once-unknown talent, including Quentin Tarantino, Kristen Stewart and Christopher Nolan, and is now full of recognizable faces presenting big new projects while clomping in the snow and networking on Main Street.

Sundance Institute gave awards to "Wicked" star Cynthia Erivo and "A Complete Unknown" director James Mangold — but the most talk was in praise of Sundance's founding lab director, Michelle Satter.

Ricky' filmmaker Rashad Frett on making his feature debut with 'Ricky,' which developed at three Sundance labs, and directing advice from Spike Lee.

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David Osit’s stunning “Predators” is much more than another attempt to interrogate our international obsession with true crime culture. It’s also an act of courage, confronting an increasingly vigilante-driven mindset that never pauses to understand that which is correctly considered vile, choosing instead to turn it into entertainment.

Trailblazer honoree James Mangold says now is the time for storytellers to lean into "sincerity and earnestness" more than ever: "We shouldn’t be embarrassed to feel shit and show it."