Lights! Cameras! ASCAP! The 28th Annual Music Café Features an Exciting Array of Songwriters and Composers at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival
By Erik Philbrook, ASCAP Editor in Chief
• February 11, 2026
As it has for over 42 years, the Sundance Film Festival took place in Park City, Utah in January, drawing creatives of all stripes from around the world and tens of thousands of passionate film lovers eager to share in the annual tradition of celebrating the marriage of visual art and music, storytelling and community.
The 2026 festival featured 90-plus feature-length films representing 28 countries and focused on exciting new voices, including 36 first-time feature filmmakers.
The 28th annual ASCAP Music Café celebrated music’s essential role in film and inspired this year’s audiences with two days of powerful live performances and conversations with composers and filmmakers.
Presented in partnership with Acura, longtime Presenting Sponsor and Official Vehicle of Sundance Film Festival, the Café was packed for two consecutive days on January 25-26, with lines down the block, drawing filmmakers and festival attendees eager to experience the Music Café’s last hurrah in Park City before the festival moves to its new home in Boulder, Colorado in 2027.
This year’s ASCAP Music Café featured performances from Grammy and Emmy Award-winning composer and songwriter Emily Bear, pop, rock and country singer-songwriter Josh Kelley, American glam rock band Foxy Shazam, Grammy-winning artist-songwriter Nathalia, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ron Artis II and composer, drummer, DJ, producer and musical polymath Photay.
ASCAP Screen Time, the ASCAP Film & Television team’s ongoing interview series about the craft and business of music for screens, presented three exclusive conversations with the creators behind some of the festival’s most anticipated films. Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna joined director Tamra Davis to discuss her documentary The Best Summer, an oral and visual history of an era-defining moment in music with behind-the-scenes footage featuring Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Rancid, Beck, The Amps and Bikini Kill.
Composer Shelby Gaines and director Padraic McKinley discussed working on the film The Weight, a tense, atmospheric Depression-era crime drama that follows a group of desperate convicts on a perilous journey through a physically and morally treacherous backcountry. Composer Anna Meredith and directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer discussed their creative collaboration on the film Wicker, a twisted, unconventional love story set in a medieval fishing village.
This year’s Sundance Awards were announced on Friday, January 30th. ASCAP composers whose music graced many of this year’s winning films in the top categories included: Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, who scored Nuisance Bear, which won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary; Mario Batkovic, who scored Shame and Money, which the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic; Tom Kingston (of Solomon Grey), who scored The Incomer, which won the NEXT Innovator Award; Alex Weston, who scored HOLD ONTO ME (Κράτα Με), which won the Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic; and Simon Russell, who scored One in a Million, which won the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary as well as the Directing Award for filmmakers Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes.
Nathan Halpern scored the music for Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!, which earned the Directing Award: US Dramatic for Josef Kubota Wladyka, and he also scored the music along with Chris Ruggiero for Take Me Home, which won the Sundance Institute Producers Award for Fiction and also earned its writer, Liz Sargent, the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: US Dramatic; Jacub Rataj scored the music for How to Divorce During the War, which won the Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic; Taul Katz scored the music for Barbara Forever, which won the Jonathan Oppenheimer Editing Award: US Documentary; and Michael Brook, who scored Bedford Park, which won the US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Debut Feature.
Other award-winning films in the documentary category included Who Killed Alex Odeh, scored by Dana Kaproff, which won the US Documentary Special Jury Award for Journalistic Excellence as well the Sundance Institute Producers Award for Nonfiction, and The Lake, scored by Natalia Tsupryk, which won the US Documentary Special Jury Award for Impact for Change.
Special awards were given to They Dream, which won the NEXT Special Jury Award for Creative Expression and scored by composer René Boscio, and In the Blink of an Eye, scored by Andrew Stanton, which won the 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize.
ASCAP composers’ music also graced many of the works in this year’s short film category. Award-winning short films included The Baddest Speechwriter of All, with music by Cameron Moody, which won the Short Film Grand Jury Prize; Crisis Actor, with music by Luca Scoppetta-Stern, which won the Short Film Jury Award: US Fiction; and Jazz Infernal, with music by Hichem Khalfa, which won the Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction.
As Sundance looks to the future with its new home in Boulder, the heart of Sundance’s mission – and ASCAP’s - beats on: a commitment to elevating a diversity of fresh, independent voices and cultivating a supportive environment for discovery, collaboration and creation.
Read about all of the ASCAP composers who powered the 2026 Sundance Film Festival selections.
For a full list of this year’s Sundance Film Festival award winners, go here.
Check out past Sundance ASCAP Music Café artists.
