Sundance Institute has announced the filmmakers selected from more than 3,800 entries for the 2026 Screenwriters Lab and Screenwriters Crash.
The Writers Lab opens Saturday at Utah’s Sundance Mountain Resort. This resort is where the institute’s research institute was established in 1981. This year’s session will commemorate the mission and legacy of founder Robert Redford.
Michelle Sutter, founding senior director of Sundance Institute’s artist program, will lead the lab along with Ilyse McKimmie, associate director of the feature film program. Jesy Nelson serves as artistic director, and creative advisors include Michael Arndt, Scott Z. Burns, Barry Jenkins, Meg LeFauve, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Lulu Wang, and Doug Wright.
“We’re thrilled to champion this new group of bold filmmakers who are developing original stories in January’s Writers Lab,” said Sutter. “These 11 fellows will hone their screenwriting skills while immersing themselves in the collaborative creative community we envisioned and established to sustain the future of independent filmmakers.”
The researchers named are Sarah Friedland, Aditi Brennan Kapil, Taylor Sang-Hyun Lee, Naishe Nyambaya, Beck Pekoe, Joanna Rothkopf, Philip Thompson, George Watsky, Cecilia Wheeler, Syed Zaga, and Renee Zhang.
The Screenwriting Crash will be held online from March 5th to 6th and will support 13 screenwriters across nine feature-length projects. Past Concentration alumni include Reynaldo Marcus Green (“Monsters and Men”), Laurel Parmet (“Starling Girl”) and Vuk Lungroff-Klotz (“Matt”).
Concentrating researchers are Nicole Dadona and Adam Wilder, Julianne Figueroa, Allison Janae Hamilton, Gret Isse, Dale Kim and Don Cabreana, Esteban Pedraza, Matthew Rosenbaum and Nicolette Johnson, Samina Saifie, Sylvie Weber and Anouk Shad.
“The artists and projects included in this year’s Screenwriters Intensive represent an incredible range of unique perspectives and storytelling styles,” McKimmie said. “What they all have in common is an unforgettable cinematic vision, and we couldn’t be more excited to support them every step of the way.”
For decades, the Lab in Feature Film Program has supported independent filmmakers. Four prominent directors, Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Chloé Zhao (Hamnet), and Nia DaCosta (Hedda), have released their films in 2025 after developing their debuts in the lab. Guillermo del Toro developed his second feature at FFP’s first screenwriters lab in Mexico.
Other alumni include Quentin Tarantino (‘Reservoir Dogs’), Robert Eggers (‘The Witches’), Gina Prince-Bythewood (‘Love and Basketball’), Daniels (‘Swiss Army Man’), Charlotte Wells (‘Aftersun’), Sean Wang (‘Diddy’) and Dee Reese (‘Pariah’).
Five projects supported by the feature film program will premiere at Sundance in 2026, including Beth de Araujo’s “Josephine” and Walter Thompson-Hernandez’s “If I Go Will They Miss Me.” FFP alumni Greg Araki, Alex Houston Fisher and Nicole Holofcener will also debut new work at the festival.
FFP-backed films released internationally in the past year include Hassan Hadi’s The President’s Cake, which won the Camera d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and was an Oscar nominee for Iraq, and Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, which won the Cannes Un Certain Regard Award and was an Oscar nominee for Chile.
