Ruben Östlund Joins Sundance Film Festival Jury

Director Ruben Östlund will join the World Cinema Dramatic Jury at the Sundance Film Festival (18-28 January) alongside film executive Hanaa Issa from the Doha Film Institute in Qatar, and Hong Kong–based producer Michael J. Werner.

The Sundance Film Festival aims to connect audiences to artists by discovering original voices and, to this end, the World Dramatic Competition consists of twelve films from emerging talents, including Ísold Uggadóttir’s And Breathe Normally (Andið eðlilega), Gustav Möller’s The Guilty (Den skyldige), and Isabella Eklöf’s Holiday.

Ruben Östlund, who is a professor in filmmaking at Gothenburg University, began his career directing ski films, which fostered a taste for long sequence shots. He developed this skill while studying at university, and it has further evolved through his films, which are predominantly observations of human social behavior.

His involvement with the Sundance Film Festival will not go unnoticed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the lead up to the Oscars. Östlund’s Palme d’Or winning feature, The Square, has been shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Film and this jury position will certainly raise his profile: The final nominations will be announced on Tuesday.