Kim Yutani is the Director of Programming of the Sundance Film Festival; she assumed that role in 2018. She began programming short films for the Festival in 2006, and became a feature film programmer in 2009, focusing on US and international fiction feature films, overseeing short film programming, and working on the Festival’s Offscreen panels and conversations. She was instrumental in creating Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong.

She 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 European Film Market — housed within the Sundance Film Festival at EFM program — which has provided exposure and sales opportunities for Sundance films immediately after world-premiering at the Festival.

She started her programming career at Outfest Los Angeles, one of the world’s leading LGBT festivals, 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.