Insider Session: Applying to the Sundance Feature Film Development Track with Vuk Lungulov-Klotz

Ilyse McKimmie is the Deputy Director for Sundance Institute's Feature Film Program. She oversees the Directors and Screenwriters Labs and the Screenwriters Intensive, provides year-round creative and strategic support to alumni filmmakers, and plays a key role in the Producers and Episodic Programs. 

Films developed at the Labs during her tenure include Dìdi (弟弟), A Thousand and One, Aftersun, Nanny, The 40-Year-Old Version, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, The Farewell, Sorry to Bother You, We the Animals, Beach Rats, Swiss Army Man, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Fruitvale Station, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Pariah, Sin Nombre, Red Road, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Paradise Now, and Maria Full of Grace, among many others. Before joining Sundance 25 years ago, she held positions at ICM and Red Wagon Entertainment. Her roots lie in the theater; her first job after graduating from UCLA was as a production stage manager in the Los Angeles theater scene.

Vuk Lungulov-Klotz (writer/director) is a Chilean Serbian filmmaker. With his feature film script, Mutt, he is an alum of the Sundance Institute Labs, the Inside Out Financing Forum, and was a top five finalist for the Tribeca / AT&T Untold Stories Grant. Mutt premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Award and won a Special Jury Prize for Acting. The film recently had its international premiere at the 2023 Berlinale Film Festival, where it won a Special Mention Award. In the television space, Lungulov-Klotz is an alum of the Ryan Murphy HALF Initiative Program, where he completed a mentorship under director Janet Mock on the FX series Pose. As a transgender storyteller, he hopes to expand queer narratives. His work focuses on intimate moments we often miss if we're not looking close enough.