Sundance Film Festival announces film voting open for Local Lens program

PARK CITY — Sundance Film Festival has announced its Local Lens program will be returning this summer. This year, for the first time ever, audience members get to vote for which movies they want to see.

Local Lens is a free movie screening series taking place July 17 through 21 in Park City and Salt Lake City. The program offers both indoor and outdoor screenings of some of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival’s most acclaimed movies.

40 years later, the mission of the Sundance Film Festival remains the same

“We want our Utah audiences to be a part of our programming process,” Alex Courides, communications manager for Sundance Film Festival, said. “We’ve picked a film per decade that was shown during previous years at the Festival and we want audiences to cast their vote for the winner to be screened as part of the Local Lens weekend.”

Films to choose from

• Hairspray (1988)
  • Director John Water’s classic Hairspray follows the story of Tracy Turnblad, a young Baltimore teen desperate to become a star on a local teen dance program and rallies against racial segregation.
• Real Women Have Curves (2002)
  • Director Patricia Cardoso’s Real Women Have Curves sees America Ferrera deliver her breakout performance in the story of a Mexican American teenager who feels stuck between her college ambitions and her responsibilities at home in East Los Angeles.
• 20 Feet from Stardom (2013)
  • Director Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet From Stardom is a documentary that opens the world of backup singers, primarily women, whose talent and art stand in the shadow of no one, although they never made the spotlight.
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
  • Director Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople follows the journey of a troubled city kid Ricky when he is placed with a foster family in rural New Zealand, and a turn of events sends the boy and his foster uncle on the run in the bush.