Sundance New Frontier

Sundance New Frontier is the common name for New Frontier, a section of the Sundance Film Festival that presents work at the crossroads of film, art, performance and new media technology. It was held in Park City, Utah, from 2007. Shari Frilot, a filmmaker and festival programmer, launched it in 2007 and was still its chief curator in 2022. The section presented its first virtual reality piece in 2012: Nonny de la Peña's Hunger in Los Angeles, shown on a headset prototype that its makers describe as the first iteration of what became the Oculus Rift. IndieWire later credited New Frontier with catalyzing the curation of VR and augmented reality work at festivals around the world. The section showed 30 VR works in 2016 and a room of AR works in 2017, and in 2018 it premiered Spheres, whose sale IndieWire described as the festival's first major VR acquisition.

The program was not held at the 2023 festival. It returned in 2024 with two works, then paused again for the 2025 and 2026 editions. In July 2026 the Sundance Institute said New Frontier would return at the 2027 festival, the first edition held in Boulder, Colorado (21-31 January 2027). The festival director's letter, as published by IndieWire, gave the returning section the name New Frontier FLUX.

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Re-opened all 21 cited sources and checked every date, figure, venue, name, quote and the 2023 cancellation, 2025-2026 pause and announced 2027 Boulder return. About review dates.

History

Origins (2007-2011)

Before Sundance, Frilot organized the Mix festival, where she held a first digital showcase of CD-ROM works in 1994, and later worked at Outfest, where she created the experimental section Platinum and, in 2000, its multimedia performance subsection Platinum Oasis. She told Engadget in 2015 that John Cooper of the Sundance Film Festival, whom she had worked with at Outfest, asked her how Platinum could be brought to Sundance. She also cited moving-image culture on the internet and art-world film work by artists such as Miranda July and Matthew Barney as reasons for the new section.

The section opened in 2007 as "New Frontier on Main" and at first concentrated on digital installation work. Over the following years it added live performance and interactive experiences. Frilot described 2010 as the point when major names from the film world began looking to New Frontier as a venue, naming Joseph Gordon-Levitt and James Franco as examples. Artists featured in the section before 2011 include Pipilotti Rist, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, Jennifer Steinkamp and Matthew Barney.

In October 2011 the Sundance Institute added the New Frontier Story Lab, a residential workshop for projects that combine film and new media technologies. Six projects were selected for the first lab, held 23-28 October 2011 at the Sundance Mountain Resort and planned under the supervision of Michelle Satter, director of the institute's Feature Film Program.

Virtual reality at New Frontier (2012-2020)

At the 2012 festival New Frontier premiered Hunger in Los Angeles, a walk-around VR documentary by de la Peña and her studio Emblematic Group. It recreates, with animated figures, a real incident recorded on audio at a food bank line outside the First Unitarian Church in downtown Los Angeles, where a diabetic man collapsed. According to Emblematic, the headset used to show the piece at Sundance was built at the University of Southern California by Mark Bolas, Palmer Luckey, Thai Phan and Evan Suma, and was the first iteration of what would become the Oculus Rift. Frilot later told Engadget: "Palmer was an intern when he was at New Frontier. There was no Oculus."

The 2015 exhibit, the section's ninth, put VR at the center. It showed 11 cinematic works with a VR element, among them de la Peña's Project Syria, the bird-flight simulation Birdly and Perspective, and 8,000 Google Cardboard viewers were given away with Google's participation. Frilot described the section's selection as "more of a solicitation process" than the open call used by the rest of the festival. The same festival saw Oculus VR introduce its film division Oculus Story Studio with the short Lost, screened on the Crescent Bay prototype headset.

In 2016, the section's tenth year, Frilot said New Frontier showed 30 VR works, culled from hundreds of submissions, compared with "about 11 or 12" the year before. The program used three Park City locations: the Claimjumper on Main Street, a VR Bar at the Gateway Center and Festival Base Camp.

The 2017 edition opened a ticketed venue one block off Main Street, the VR Palace, with 16 VR experiences booked in one-hour slots; the Main Street site showed another 11 projects, and a VR Bar at the Music Cafe ran on five nights. Works included Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin's Life of Us, Tree by Milica Zec and Winslow Porter, and de la Peña's Out of Exile: Daniel's Story. Oculus Story Studio's Dear Angelica, directed by Saschka Unseld and drawn with the studio's Quill tool, debuted at the VR Palace. A "Hologram room" presented three AR-related works: Benjamin Muzzin's holographic sculpture Full Turn, Melissa Painter's Heroes (using Microsoft HoloLens and VR headsets) and Daniella Segal's Journey to the Center of the Natural Machine, which ran on the Meta 2. Frilot told UploadVR that, to her knowledge, it would be "the first major showing of works engaging with AR headsets in a cultural setting."

For 2018 the programmers combined invitations with an open call for VR work. The section used three venues: an exhibition at the Kimball Art Center, New Frontier at The Ray (including The Box, a 40-seat mobile VR cinema) and the VR Bar at Music Cafe. The first part of Eliza McNitt's VR series Spheres, Songs of Spacetime, premiered in New Frontier that year. During the festival the newly launched distributor CityLights bought the three-part series, executive produced by Darren Aronofsky, for a reported low-to-mid seven figures. IndieWire called it the festival's first major VR acquisition. A few days later Dogwoof acquired Zikr: A Sufi Revival, the first sale of a VR documentary at Sundance.

The 2019 slate had 32 projects from 10 countries, spanning VR, AR, mixed reality and artificial intelligence, shown at New Frontier at The Ray and a new venue, New Frontier Central, at 950 Iron Horse Drive. The institute's announcement listed year-round New Frontier programs (the Story Lab, Day Labs in several cities and a residency program with partners such as Jaunt Studios) and named Oculus, Unity Technologies and PlayStation among the program's supporters. In 2020 the selections included Persuasion Machines by Karim Amer and Guvenc Ozel, a modern living room equipped with smart devices whose data streams become visible, and Spaced Out by the French artist Pyaré, a headset experience of space travel that participants took underwater in the Sheraton Park City hotel pool.

Online editions (2021-2022)

At the virtual 2021 festival, New Frontier was a virtual venue that passholders explored as avatars. It had three areas: a Gallery for the performances, AR, VR and other works, where rooms held up to 250 avatars; Film Party, a social space tied to the festival's daily premieres; and Cinema House, a social cinema reachable only through a VR headset. Non-passholders could buy an Explorer's Pass for US$25.

Sundance announced the 2022 lineup, the section's 16th-anniversary edition, as 15 premieres in a "biodigital" format. The online venue, The Spaceship, again developed with the studio Active Theory and usable on a laptop or VR headset, was to run 20-28 January 2022, with in-person extensions at a new Park City venue, The Craft, and performances at the Egyptian Theatre. On 5 January 2022 the Sundance Institute moved the festival's in-person Utah elements online because of the Omicron surge of COVID-19.

Pauses and return (2023-2027)

In October 2022 Frilot told artists who had submitted work that New Frontier would not offer an exhibition at the 2023 festival, which also dropped The Spaceship, and that submission fees would be refunded. Her note said the program was taking time "to reflect upon the rich learnings gained over the past two years." A Sundance representative told IndieWire the decision was unrelated to budget cuts. IndieWire also reported that the New Frontier lab program had been cut in 2021 amid pandemic-related reductions.

The section returned for the 40th festival in January 2024 with two selections chosen from 385 submissions: Rashaad Newsome's Being (the Digital Griot), a participatory experience built around an artificial intelligence "digital griot", and Gary Hustwit's generative documentary Eno. Sundance said that year's section focused on the rise of AI.

Sundance's July 2026 update on the 2027 festival said New Frontier had been "on pause" for the previous two years to evaluate changes in the media landscape and would return for 2027 in Boulder. In the version of festival director Eugene Hernandez's letter printed by IndieWire, the section is called New Frontier FLUX; the sundance.org version, as read in October 2026, calls it New Frontier.

Format and organization

New Frontier is organized as an exhibition. In 2020 the Park Record noted that some selections were shown on traditional screens, but most required equipment such as headsets, swiveling chairs, darkened booths or haptic wear; the section has also presented media installations and live performances. In 2015 Frilot said she researched other events and festivals and then requested works from artists; from at least 2018 the programmers also ran an open call for VR work. Its venues changed from edition to edition; access to the 2017 VR Palace was sold through the festival's regular ticketing system.

The Sundance Institute supported New Frontier artists between festivals through the Story Lab (from 2011), Day Labs and a residency program. Frilot received a Peabody Visionary Award in 2022 in the interactive category. The citation credits her with persuading the festival in 2007 to dedicate a section to new forms of storytelling and with helping catalyze work in AI, VR, AR and games.

Notable editions

Festival	Format and venues	Notable VR and AR facts
2007	"New Frontier on Main"	First edition; digital installation work
2012	Park City	Hunger in Los Angeles by Nonny de la Peña shown on a USC-built prototype headset
2015	Park City; ninth year	11 cinematic works with a VR element; 8,000 Google Cardboard viewers given away
2016	Claimjumper, VR Bar (Gateway Center), Festival Base Camp	30 VR works
2017	VR Palace, Main Street site, VR Bar at Music Cafe	16 VR experiences at the VR Palace; Dear Angelica; three AR headset works
2018	Kimball Art Center, New Frontier at The Ray (with The Box), VR Bar	Spheres sold to CityLights; Zikr: A Sufi Revival sold to Dogwoof
2019	New Frontier at The Ray, New Frontier Central	32 projects from 10 countries
2020	The Ray Theatre, Sheraton Park City pool, other sites	Persuasion Machines; underwater VR piece Spaced Out
2021	Online, avatar-based venue	Cinema House accessible only by VR headset
2022	The Spaceship (online); planned Park City extensions moved online	15 premieres
2023	Not held	Exhibition cancelled in October 2022
2024	Park City and Salt Lake City festival	Two works chosen from 385 submissions; section focused on AI
2025-2026	Not held	Section paused
2027	Boulder, Colorado (announced)	Return announced in July 2026

See also

• Tribeca Immersive
• Venice Immersive
• Cinematic VR
• Oculus Story Studio
• Emblematic Group
• Location-based virtual reality