Kristen Stewart attended the 2024 Sundance Film Festival Opening Night Gala on Thursday, January 18, 2024, in Kamas, Utah.
On Thursday night, Kristen Stewart wrapped up her acceptance speech for the Visionary Award from the Sundance Film Festival. This memorable moment occurred during the Sundance Institute’s fundraising gala, the starry kick-off for this year’s edition, titled “Opening Night Gala: Celebrating 40 Years Presented by Chase Sapphire.”
During the opening gala, Stewart lends some advice for breaking into the industry. Stewart said, “You know we live in a world that is so content-obsessed, and so it’s wild to think that if you don’t make it, then somehow you are not cool, important, relevant, or something, but I feel like the only reason to commit to something fully is because you have a perspective. People with perspective don’t need advice.”
Stewart said, “I really love this festival — my whole life I have loved this festival. I came here for the first time 20 years ago, I realized today. I could barely speak English when spoken to. I got my first pair of Ugg boots, and I actually got to be where the cool kids were. I knew that in my bones this was just a place full of yes, in a world full of no. I couldn’t even understand why yet, but I knew it and I know that I was right,” said Stewart, who also said the honor arrived perfectly timed as well. “Words were only as meaningful as the people and places that give them to you and to be accepted by the community I have admired so personally, it is so lovely and enlivening. It is so well-timed. I need this.”
“It’s an irrational and illogical endeavor to make these movies that are so impossible to make and it’s tropey and kind of embarrassing and weird to go on about how hard it is to make a movie, but everyone here actually gets that,” Stewart explained. “Things only happen by the sheerest most illogical, insane, monstrous force of will towards something that should not work. But if it does, it could be absolutely amazing, and you could wind up at Sundance.”
Stewart adds, “People love to say, like, ‘Oh, it’s a miracle that this movie got made; it’s so magic.’ I’m, like, no. Someone crazy forced it. They were like, it must happen and I will not take no for an answer.”
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