Park City Film Festival to debut Oct. 23

In 1978, the Utah/U.S. Film Festival was held for the first time in Salt Lake City. It moved to Park City in 1981, transitioning into the legendary Sundance Film Festival. But Sundance is gone now, moved to Colorado starting next January, and now a new fest for independent filmmakers is set to begin.

The Park City Film Festival will kick off its inaugural year Oct. 23, running for three days and showing films in the legendary Jim Sante Auditorium at the Park City library. It's the same venue where many Sundance films have been shown for years, and the focus will be on independent film and emerging creative voices.

"This festival, like our organization, Park City Film, was created because of our love for independent film," said Katy Wang, executive director. "We've shown films there once a quarter as an organization because the community has loved it, so when we heard SFF was leaving, and we'd had such an amazing response from the community for our events, we knew film is just embedded into the fabric of Park City."

Organizers announced the lineup for the festival in late August. It will begin Oct. 23 with Utah filmmaker JJ Gerber's documentary "The Life We Leave." Gerber is an Emmy-nominated producer who grew up in Park City. He has spent more than 15 years working on narrative and documentary films and is making his directorial debut with "The Life We Leave." The film became an audience darling at its world premiere at South by Southwest (SXSW), according to Wang.

The eight other curated documentary and narrative films include:

"Adam's Apple" | Amy Jenkins | USA Documentary

"Brian" | Will Ropp | USA Narrative

"Frank & Louis" | Petra Volpe | UK & Switzerland Narrative

"Next Life" | Drake Doremus | UK Narrative

"Teeth to the Wind" | Ben Knight & Drew Smith | USA Documentary

"The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony" | Habiba Nosheen | Pakistan Documentary

"The Last Critic" | Matty Wishnow | USA Documentary

"Zetjune" | Alex Camilleri | Malta Narrative

The festival will also include panel discussions and post-screening Q&As.

"We see this as an opportunity to really expand our programming," Wang said. "We're not going to be Sundance. We're starting at a responsible size and building from there. And we're thinking about how we can help our community during a different time of year, October, which is shoulder season for our restaurants and hotels. It's been fantastic to see the response we're getting from filmmakers and we're excited that independent filmmaking still exists in Park City."

Tickets and passes are on sale now at parkcityfilm.org/festival.