Sundance 2025 Celebrates Two Produces with Sundance Institute
Each year, producers gather at the Sundance Film Festival to celebrate and honor producers within the independent filmmaking community. This week, at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Producers Celebration presented by Amazon MGM Studios, held at The Park in Park City, Utah, producers of films featured in the program came together for the Sundance Institute | Amazon MGM Studios Producers Awards and a keynote address by David Hinojosa, producer and partner at 2AM, who has produced Babygirl, The Brutalist, and Past Lives, among others. Winners of the Sundance Institute | Amazon MGM Studios Producers Awards were announced, with two $10,000 grants — one for fiction and the other for nonfiction — awarded to producers Joe Pirro(The Wedding Banquet) and Danielle Varga</> (Seeds). Both films are premiering at the 2025 Festival. Other speakers included Sundance Institute’s Amanda Kelso, Michelle Satter, Kristin Feeley, Shira Rockowitz, and Maria Clement,</> as well as a spokesperson from Amazon MGM Studios.
David Hinojosa is an Academy Award–nominated producer most recently known for Babygirl, Past Lives, and The Brutalist. In 2020, he co-founded 2AM. Previously at Killer Films, he produced acclaimed titles including Beatriz at Dinner, Still Alice, First Reformed, Carol, and Zola. He is active in Producers United and the PGA and lectures at NYU.
The Amazon MGM Studios Fiction Producers Award was given to producer Joe Pirro, producer for The Wedding Banquet, which is premiering in the Premieres section at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Joe Pirro is Head of Production at James Schamus’ company Symbolic Exchange and based in New York City. In addition to Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet, recent producing credits include Ahn’s Driveways, Mike Ott’s McVeigh, and Minhal Baig’s We Grown Now.
The Amazon MGM Studios Nonfiction Producers Award was given to Danielle Varga, producer for Seeds, which premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Danielle Varga has been producing award-winning nonfiction films for the past decade. In addition to Brittany Shyne’s Seeds, she has produced Brett Story’s The Hottest August, Todd Chandler’s Bulletproof, Vicky Du’s Light of the Setting Sun, and Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s A Photographic Memory, and she co-produced Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson.
The Sundance Institute Producers Program is supported by an endowment from the Sandra and Malcolm Berman Charitable Foundation, with generous additional support from John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Amazon MGM Studios.
