Fil-Am Sundance film programmer Irene Soriano on curating films, rise of Filipino filmmakers

News Snapshot:

WASHINGTON, DC, USA — There is a Filipina behind the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, whose work is crucial to the event, despite rarely receiving the spotlight. Irene Soriano, a seasoned veteran in the world of film programming, had the honor of being part of the selection team that netted a wide variety of short films for this year’s festival. Remarkably, many of the films came from Filipino filmmakers, making the occasion even more special. “I think people think it’s very glamorous, but programming work, you know, we had 12,000 short film submissions,” she shared with me in a Zoom interview...