Yahoo Lifestyle Sundance: Michelle Satter Brings Tears To Festival’s Gala With Words Of Family & Loss; Cynthia Erivo & James Mangold Accept Visionary & Trailblazer Awards
The Sundance Film Festival chose well in selecting the honorees for tonight’s Gala fundraiser at the newly opened Grand Hyatt Deer Valley.
Beyond freshly minted Oscar nominees Cynthia Erivo and James Mangold in the house to receive the Visionary Award and Trailblazer Award respectively, it was Michelle Satter — the Founding Senior Director of Artists Program for the Sundance Institute — whose stirring speech unified the high-profile packed ballroom.
More from Deadline
Satter was recognized for her decades-long commitment to nurturing artists and cultivating independent film through the Sundance Labs. As many in the room knew and as Satter mentioned, she and her husband David Latt were among the thousands who lost their homes in the wildfires that scorched LA. Horribly, this tragedy came after Satter and Latt’s youngest son Michael, an advocate in the industry for social justice, was fatally shot in November 2023 at his Miracle Mile home in a senseless murder.
Reading a letter from her father, Sundance board member Amy Redford teed off a series of honorary speeches tonight for Satter, which also included warm praise from Glenn Close and filmmaker Marielle Heller. “Michelle, my heart is saddened that I can’t be in person tonight,” the correspondence from the 88-year-old Robert Redford began. “You’ve been with me since the inception of Sundance back in 1981 when this organization was merely an idea…you were instrumental in shaping it into the impactful entity it is today.”
With literally dozens of Lab grads over the decades in the sprawling Grand Hyatt ballroom, Satter took the stage to a standing ovation and tears rolling down the cheeks of more than a few attendees.
She acknowledged the loss of her home in her poignant remarks, but leaned into the gratitude she felt for the “village” of family, friends and artists who rushed to help. Satter thanked her husband and other son (and CAA agent) Franklin Latt for their support and love of independent film. Satter then spoke of Michael directly to a room full also of friends and colleagues of his. “He would want to say to all of you, leading with love, building community, and fostering equity and cultural change through heart and storytelling, is our central way forward.”
Among the other attendees tonight were Sundance regulars Jon Hamm and his wife Anna Osceola, former Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper, documentarian Rory Kennedy and spouse Mark Bailey. There too were MACRO boss Charles King, reality TV producer and recently appointed Trump UK envoy Mark Burnett and his wife Roma Downey, Boots Riley and his wife Gabby La La, Boys Don’t Cry filmmaker Kimberly Peirce and Searchlight Pictures President Matthew Greenfield, and Sundance alum, director Nikyatu Jusu.
The Wicked star was given the Visionary Award, an honor for uncompromising work and notable contributions to the entertainment industry. On Thursday she received her third Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress in Wicked. Erivo has history with Sundance: she was part of the 2021 jury and her movie Drift premiered in Park City in 2023. Wicked sits as the highest grossing feature adaptation of a Broadway musical ever at the global box office ($710.8M).
RELATED: Cynthia Erivo On Best Actress ‘Wicked’ Oscar Nomination: “It’s Madness And Amazing”
Fellow Brit Olivia Colman presented Erivo with the Visionary award, hailing the multihyphenate’s “dedication” and “fearless charisma and warm soul.” Oscar winner Colman added of the two-time Best Actress nominee: “She makes every revelation feel like it’s for you specifically, every Elphaba, every Harriet Tubman, every Jacqueline in Drift.”
Ervio said she had to look up the word visionary, not because she didn’t know what the word meant, but what its full scope is. “The first part of the word, it’s something to do with sight or seeing…it’s thinking about or planning the future with imagination and wisdom. A visionary is someone who can see into the future. I never consider myself a person who can see what’s to come,” admitted the actress. However, she said she’s been “dogged, determined and passionate” when it comes to her career; that “I’m lucky and grateful to be surrounded by visionaries.”
Joel Edgerton introduced Trailblazer Award winner Mangold, after A Complete Unknown best supporting actor Oscar nominee Edward Norton beamed in to praise the filmmaker. Mangold also has a rich Sundance history: he developed his script for 1997’s Copland at the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters and Directors lab back in 1994, and won the Special Jury Prize in 1995 for his movie Heavy in 1995. Mangold landed three Oscar noms for his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Jay Cocks). The Trailblazer kudo goes to those with unwavering dedication and notable contributions to the field of cinema.
Mangold extolled the Institute’s “really powerful support system”. Before arriving to Sundance, it was a far off place for Mangold, a place for Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee. At the Institute he came up with the shooting plans for Copland, and refined the script “with the help of Robert Redford, Sally Field and Michelle Satter.”
Turning to his canon, the Logan and Walk the Line director said that he was always fascinated by movies “that put their feelings on the line, put their hearts on their sleeve. We become slightly hostile the way we talk about them. Like melodramatic. We kill some of the fearlessness.”
“We should be embarrassed,” he added in this “time of irony and snark.”
Vanguard Awards recipients tonight were Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie for non-fiction (they directed of last year’s entry Sugarcane), and Didi director Sean Wang, for fiction.
The 2025 Sundance Film Festival runs until February 2.
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
