Los Angeles-based Kim Yutani is director of programming for the Sundance Film Festival. She began programming short films for the festival in 2006, and became a feature film programmer in 2009, focusing on US and international fiction features, overseeing shorts programming, and working on offscreen panels and conversations. She was instrumental in creating Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong (now Sundance Film Festival: Asia).
Yutani represents Sundance internationally, serving on juries, speaking on panels, and working to cultivate relationships with film commissions, industry, and artists around the world. Since 2014, she has also overseen a collaboration with the Berlinale’s EFM – housed within the Sundance Film Festival at EFM programme – which has provided exposure and sales opportunities for Sundance films immediately after premiering at the Festival.
She started her programming career at Outfest Los Angeles, where she was the artistic director and the director of programming. She was a programmer for the Provincetown International Film Festival, has been a reader for Creative Capital, and was on the short film nominating committee for Cinema Eye Honors. Prior to her film festival work, Yutani was a film critic and freelance journalist focusing on independent film. She got her start in the industry as assistant to the director Gregg Araki.