27 January - 6 February 2022

The Slamdance Film Festival presented its 28th edition in a virtual format running from 27 January to 6 February 2022. We'd like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the filmmakers, programmers, jury, and viewers who helped make this year's festival such a meaningful success.

Dedicated to fostering a community for independent emerging artists, the feature competition lineup boasted 23 premieres, including 13 World, 6 North American, and 4 U.S. debuts. Chosen from over 1,124 submissions, this year’s competition lineup hailed from all corners of the globe, including Germany, Australia, Iran, Canada, China, Italy, Poland, and the UK among others. All competition films are feature-length, directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than $1 million USD - a feature that has been unique to Slamdance since its founding in 1995.

As always, all films in the lineup were selected by a team of Slamdance alumni via a blind submission process and are programmed democratically. This year it received 8,168 total submissions, of which 1,579 were features. Narrative Features, Documentary Features and Episodes sections are eligible for the Audience Award while all films and projects are eligible for the George Sparks Spirit of Slamdance Award and the AGBO Fellowship, the former of which is voted upon by filmmakers at the festival.