The Godmother of Independent Film

One of the most influential women in Hollywood has no desire for the spotlight.

- BY ERICA GONZALES

If you look at the slate of this year's best films, you'd see a reflection of Michelle Satter's impact. Sinners, One Battle After Another, Hamnet, and Hedda are all directed by filmmakers she supported early on in their careers: Ryan Coogler, Paul Thomas Anderson, Chloé Zhao, Nia DaCosta. Some call her the “fairy godmother of independent film,” but her official title is founding senior director of artist programs at the Sundance Institute, the nonprofit Robert Redford launched in 1981 to support independent cinema.

For 44 years at the Institute, Satter has been instrumental in the creation and operation of programs that have propelled some of the biggest names in film (Quentin Tarantino, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Darren Aronofsky, Lulu Wang, and Taika Waititi among them), back when they were launching some of their first work. Satter says from her sunlit home office in California amid a rare break in her schedule.

Sundance’s support comes in the form of labs, grants, mentorship, and resources to help artists get their work off the ground all year long, not just during the famed Sundance Film Festival in January (which is moving to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027, after being hosted in Park City, Utah, for decades). In the Institute’s Screenwriter Labs, held in January and June, participants refine their scripts with a group of advisers, while in the annual Directors Lab, filmmakers workshop, shoot, and edit scenes from their original works with a production crew and advisers supplied by the Institute (this year, the latter included Ed Harris and Thirteen director Catherine Hardwicke). “We're not going to rethink the story that filmmakers want to tell—we’re going to help them get to the best version of the story they want to tell,” Satter says. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s great work.”