Dispelling Myths About Submitting Your Short to Sundance

Heidi Zwicker is a Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, focusing on international and U.S. Narrative Feature Films, Midnight and Shorts. She has been contributing to various Sundance Institute programs for over ten years, beginning with the Feature Film Program, International. Heidi was a Programmer at Palm Springs International Shortfest from 2011-2014 and also programs at the Provincetown International Film Festival. Originally from the north shore of Boston, she has a degree in English from University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth and an M.A. in Critical Studies of Film and Television from UCLA.

Mike Plante is a senior programmer for short films at the Sundance Film Festival, where he has worked since 2001. Each year he and a team of 9 shorts programmers go through over 10,000 entries to select 70 shorts to play at the Festival, discovering new film talent in the process. He has worked at film festivals since 1993, and he also makes feature documentaries. His recent film And With Him Came the West (2019) played at MoMA Doc Fortnight and his short The Polaroid Job (2017) is available at The New York Times Op-Docs.

Dilcia Barrera is a former Film Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival. For over a decade, Dilcia has worked for international film festivals including a tenure as Programming Director of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, Senior Programmer at AFI FEST, a Sundance Shorts Programmer and has collaborated with programming teams at OUTFEST and The Los Angeles Film Festivals. Most recently, she was LACMA's Film Curator and during that time was invited to curate two new shorts categories for the New York Film Festival. In 2016, she was featured in "IndieWire’s 20 Latin Americans Making a Difference for American Independent Film Today" and subsequently ScreenDaily's "Future Leaders 2019: programmers and curators to watch" list.