The Sundance Film Festival truly rolled double last year when the picked the honorees for tonight’s Gala fundraiser at the newly opened Grand Hyatt Deer Valley.

However, even with newly minted Oscar nominees Cynthia Erivo and James Mangold in the house to receive the Visionary Award and Trailblazer Award respectively, it was Michelle Satter, the Founding Senior Director of Artists Program for the Sundance Institute that brought the high-profile packed ballroom truly together.

Satter was being recognized for her decades-long commitment to nurturing artists and cultivating independent film through the Sundance Labs. As many in the room knew and as Satter mentioned herself, she and her husband David Latt were among the thousands who lost their homes in the recent wildfires that have scorched LA. Horribly, Satter and Latt’s youngest son Michael, an advocate in the industry for social justice, was fatally shot in November 2023 shocking at his Miracle Mile home.  

Reading a letter from her father, Sundance board member Amy Redford teed off a series of honorary speeches tonight for Satter, which also included warm praise from Glenn Close and filmmaker Marielle Heller. “Michelle, my heart is saddened that I can’t be in person tonight,” the correspondence from the 88-year-old Robert Redford began. “You’ve been with me since the inception of Sundance back in 1981 when this organization was merely an idea…you were instrumental in shaping it into the impactful entity it is today.”

With literally dozens of Lab grads over the decades in the sprawling Grand Hyatt ballroom, Satter took the stage to a standing ovation and tears rolling down the cheeks of more than a few attendees.

Towards the end of her poignant remarks, and noting the loss of her home but the ongoing “village” of family, friends and artists, Satter thanked her husband and other son (and CAA agent) Franklin Lott for their support and love of independent film. Taking a moment, Satter then spoke of Michael directly to a room full also of friends and colleagues of his. “He would want to say to all of you, leading with love, building community, and fostering equity and cultural change through heart and storytelling, is our central way forward.”

Among the other attendees tonight were Sundance regular Jon Hamm and his wife Anna Osceola, former Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper, documentarian Rory Kennedy and spouse Mark Bailey. There too were MACRO boss Charles King, reality TV producer and recently appointed Trump UK envoy Mark Burnett and his wife Roma Downey, Boots Riley and his wife Gabby La La, Boys Don’t Cry filmmaker Kimberly Peirce and Searchlight Pictures President Matthew Greenfield, and Sundance alum, director Nikyatu Jusu.

The Wicked star was given the Visionary Award which honors those known for their uncompromising work and notable contributions to the entertainment industry. On Thursday she received her third Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress in Wicked. Erivo’s history with Sundance counts being part of the 2021 jury and her movie Drift here in Park City in 2023, which she also produced. Wicked is the highest grossing feature adaptation of a Broadway musical ever at the global box office ($710.8M).

Fellow British thespian colleague Olivia Colman presented Erivo with the Visionary award hailing the multihyphenate’s “dedication” and “fearless charisma and warm soul.” Oscar winner Colman added of the two-time Best Actress nominee: “She makes every revelation feel like it’s for you specifically,” said Colman, “every Elphaba, every Harriet Tubman, every Jacqueline in Drift.

Taking the award, Ervio said she had to look up the word visionary, not because she didn’t know what the word meant, but what its full scope is. “The first part of the word, it’s something to do with sight or seeing…it’s thinking about or planning the future with imagination and wisdom. A visionary is someone who can see into the future. I never consider myself a person who can see what’s to come,” admitted the actress. However, she said she’s been “dogged, determined and passionate” when it came to her career; that “I’m lucky and grateful to be surrounded by visionaries.”

Mangold’s A Complete Unknown best supporting actor Oscar nominee Edward Norton beamed in to praise the filmmaker, in addition to Joel Edgerton who was in-person to present the award.

Mangold, who developed his script for 1997’s Copland here at the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters and Directors lab back in 1994, is getting the Trailblazer Award. He also won the Special Jury Prize in 1995 for his movie Heavy in 1995. Mangold landed three Oscar noms in a career count of five for his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown in Best Director, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Jay Cocks). The Trailblazer kudo goes to those with unwavering dedication and notable contributions to the field of cinema.

Mangold extolled the Institute’s “really powerful support system”. Before arriving to Sundance, it was a far off place for Mangold, a place for Quention Tarantino and Spike Lee. At the Institute he came up with the shooting plans for Copland, and refined the script “with the help of Robert Redford, Sally Field and Michelle Satter.”

Turning to his canon, the Logan and Walk the Line director said that he was always fascinated by movies “that put their feelings on the line, put their hearts on their sleeve. We become slightly hostile the way we talk about them. Like melodramatic. We kill some of the fearlessness.”

“We should be embarrassed,” he added in this “time of irony and snark.”

Those receiving Vanguard Awards tonight were Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie for non-fiction, directors of last year’s Sugarcane, and Sean Wang, the director of Dìdi for fiction.