Case Study: Sundance Film Festival achieves expanded reach and an inclusive virtual festival with Dropbox

How a grand experiment is making the festival more expansive and inclusive

The Sundance Film Festival, led by new director Tabitha Jackson, faced an abrupt challenge when COVID-19 made its traditional in-person event in Park City impossible. With theaters closed and staff dispersed across home offices, the team had to decide whether to cancel or reinvent the festival while preserving its role as a community and launchpad for filmmakers—managing decentralized communication and the loss of in-person energy in the process.

Sundance chose to build a vibrant online festival platform, running tests and a mini-festival, introducing live Q&As, and launching experimental offerings like the New Frontier XR hub, while relying on tools such as Zoom, Slack and Dropbox to coordinate work asynchronously. The result was a more accessible, inclusive event that expanded global reach, enabled virtual filmmaker engagement and reduced travel, preserving much of the festival’s momentum and creating new formats that organizers expect to keep even after in-person events resume.

Sundance Film Festival

Tabitha Jackson

Director