Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin was recently announced as one of this year’s Sundance Film Festival jury members. According to Variety, she joins playwright Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play) and writer-director Eliza Hittman (Never Rarely Sometimes Always) as the jurors for the U.S. Dramatic Competition program. There will be 16 jurors in total, each of whom, like Matlin et al., will be tasked with assessing the awards potential for the films within their respective programs. Per Sundance’s press release, winners will be announced in an intimate ceremony on Friday, January 27.

“It’s going to be fun,” Matlin said in our interview ahead of the festival, “because, as an artist, as an actor, as someone who has a passion for film and television, I have my own unique perspective.” Indeed, Matlin made history in 1987 by becoming the youngest performer to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was also the first-ever deaf actor to win an Oscar, that is, until her CODA co-star Troy Kotsur nabbed his Best Supporting Actor trophy just last year.

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On top of her work on the screen, Matlin has also been a staunch advocate for the deaf community when it comes to authentic representation and accessibility. In a 2021 interview with The Guardian, she details how she almost quit CODA after learning that early financial backers of the film wanted to cast big-name, hearing actors to play the two major deaf characters. Matlin has also fought for decades for better access to closed captioning, eventually working with the National Association of the Deaf in the early-2010s to send Congress a letter mandating closed captioning on streaming sites.

CODA Returns to Sundance as Part of Encore Special Screening

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Returning to Sundance this year in-person is surely a homecoming of sorts for Matlin. CODA’s journey to the Oscars started in Park City in 2021. Taking place during the height of the pandemic, however, the festival that year turned towards virtual screenings. This year, Sundance is bringing CODA back as part of its Encore Special Screening, which will include other past festival favorites like Klondike, Navalny, and Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised).

“It’s going to be nice to sit at a theater and relax, knowing that we’re not up for awards [and we don’t have to] convince people that this is the best movie at Sundance to vote for it,” Matlin said. “We can have a discussion, we can reminisce about our days on the set, we can talk about what’s going to be happening as a result of the film, and what happened before we put the movie out there.”

“I get to watch twelve movies, and they’re making them available with captions,” she added, which is something she actually didn’t have to fight for. “They’re making it available and accessible to me, and I’m very grateful to the Sundance Film Festival.”

In addition to her upcoming jury duties at Sundance, Matlin will be making her directorial debut in an episode of Accused, Fox’s remake of the 2010 BBC series of the same name, which premieres January 22, 2023.