30West Hires Sundance Film Festival Programming Chief Trevor Groth

Details: Category: Entertainment News; Published on Tuesday, 30 January 2018 06:19

30WEST has hired Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming, Trevor Groth, who will join the company in February. Groth first joined the programming staff at Sundance in 1993, named Senior Programmer in 2003 and Director in 2009.

While at Sundance, Groth has helped champion acclaimed titles such as Whiplash, Fruitvale Station, Hard Eight, Pi, Memento and Napoleon Dynamite. Under his direction as head programmer for the Festival's Short Film Section, Groth was among the first to showcase the shorts of now prominent filmmakers such as Spike Jonze, Cary Fukunaga, Taika Waititi and Sarah Polley.

30WEST said: "For over twenty years Trevor has been one of the film community's most consistent champions of original creative voices, all while exhibiting a fearless commitment to pushing the boundaries of film creation and distribution. We could not be more thrilled that he has chosen to join us."

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Trevor Groth continued: "It's been a wild and exhilarating ride being in the driver's seat of a festival that has launched many of our generation's greatest independent films and filmmakers. I look forward to continuing that dynamic journey with a company equally committed to discovering what's next."

Groth worked for the Sundance Institute's filmmaker labs and development program while still a student in film school at the University of Utah.

Since 2002, Groth has also served as Artistic Director for The CineVegas Film Festival and been a guest curator for the Australian Film Institute, and a juror at festivals including Cannes Critics' Week, SXSW, Morelia and more. He has also served as a consultant on a number of film productions and was instrumental in the creation of Sundance Film Festival London, Sundance Film Festival Hong Kong and Sundance NEXT Fest.

Last week at Sundance, 30WEST purchased the fast rising film studio, NEON. The two companies previously partnered to co-finance marketing and distribution of the acclaimed feature I, Tonya. 30WEST also partnered with Bleecker Street to buy the U.S. rights to Wash Westmoreland's Colette starring Keira Knightley and arranged the partnership between NEON and AGBO Films to buy Assassination Nation, directed by Sam Levinson.

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30WEST is currently in production on two feature films, Karyn Kusama's Destroyer, starring Nicole Kidman, and Peter Hedges' Ben Is Back, starring Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges. This spring 30WEST will release the film Beast with Roadside Attractions, which premiered to acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival and most recently enjoyed its US premiere at Sundance.

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With offices in Los Angeles and New York, 30WEST provides capital and strategic guidance to high caliber creative projects and forward-thinking companies operating throughout popular culture. Its media practice works with filmmakers to guide every stage of creative packaging, providing direct capital investment for production, sales, distribution and licensing in order to maximize production quality and audience reach. 30WEST was founded in 2017 by Dan Friedkin and Micah Green.