Sundance suddenly has a piracy problem.
James Sweeney’s Twinless, a Sundance Film Festival selection that emerged as a double winner after Friday’s awards ceremony, has been pulled from the fest’s online screening portal after clips surfaced on social media platforms. The move came just hours after Isabel Castro’s documentary about late superstar Selena Quintanilla, Selena y Los Dinos, was pulled over similar piracy concerns. That film also became a fest favorite after picking up a trophy for U.S. documentary special jury award for archival storytelling.
The situation marks the first time in the festival’s four years of screening films online that pirated copies and clips have ended up online. Sundance pivoted quickly amid the COVID-19 pandemic to offer an online platform, which has been wildly well received by filmmakers and audiences as a way to expand accessibility for the festival. It’s still too early to tell how the piracy will impact the fest moving forward though a rep for the festival told IndieWire, “We intend to keep the Sundance Film Festival platform fully available for all remaining films.”
In making the initial announcement regarding Castro’s film, Sundance released the following statement: “The Sundance Film Festival and the creative team of Selena y Los Dinos are sorry to inform our viewers that the film has suffered a series of copyright infringements and must therefore be removed from the Sundance Film Festival online platform. We regret that you will no longer be able to access the film on the platform. We acknowledge and regret that this may cause disappointment, however part of our commitment to advocating for independent filmmakers is ensuring that they can protect their art that they have created and earn a living — now and in the future. We take copyright infringement extremely seriously and intend to fully cooperate with local, state and federal law enforcement.”
For Twinless, which snagged an audience award as well as a special jury prize for acting for its star Dylan O’Brien, clips of the film surfaced on X (formerly Twitter) as well as TikTok. O’Brien became a trending topic on the former as well in an unfortunate turn of events as the main clip making the rounds was a sex scene with Sweeney that is a spoiler in the film. Sweeney and O’Brien play grieving siblings who meet in a twin bereavement group and strike up a friendship, and the scene reveals events that are best kept as a surprise.
The responsible party for the pirated clips was not a popular person online Saturday. “Whoever leaked that Sundance film is honestly such a loser,” posted freelancer writer Nadira Begum. “Risking the future of online access to film festivals (just when they were beginning to feel somewhat more accessible!) for a few seconds of footage… was it worth it?”
The online portion of the film festival is open through Feb. 2.
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