Sundance Kicks Off Return To In-Person Festival With Honors For W. Kamau Bell, Ryan Coogler, Nikyatu Jusu, & Luca Guadagnino + A Swipe At Armie Hammer

deadline.com:

“I prefer to speak through my movies,” Ryan Coogler told a well-heeled crowd tonight at the late night A Taste of Sundance dinner.

That may be true for the Creed and Black Panther director, but accepting the first annual Sundance Institute Visionary Award on the first day of the 2023 festival, 2013 Audience and Grand Jury awards winner Coolger certainly had something to say Thursday.  “I was twice as nervous as I am now,” the filmmaker told the first big event of the first in-person Sundance in three years of his career making visit to the Robert Redford founded festival a decade ago. “The reason I was nervous is I had a deep desire not to let people down,” Coogler added.

With the family of the slain Fruitvale protagonist Oscar Grant seated in front of Coogler at the Basin Recreation Center, Oscar nominations likely for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and a Steph Curry documentary at this year’s Sundance, Coogler seemed far from letting anyone down. “He is quiet royalty,” stated a fresh from London Lena Waithe earlier as she presented Coogler with his award. “He is one of us and that’s what qualifies him to tell our stories,” Waithe, who is a producer on the drama A Thousand and One this year, continued.

Replacing the long running Artist at the Table ceremony as Sundance’s commencement event, tonight’s A Taste of Sundance event may have been far off the snow packed beaten path of Park City’s Main Street, but it was right in the mainstream of the over 40-year old shindig.