By Kristen Feely
On Monday, January 22, editors whose work screened at the 2024 Festival across all categories (fiction and nonfiction), gathered to celebrate the art and craft of editing.
This annual event (sponsored by Adobe) revealed the winners of the 2024 Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Awards. The Awards honor two editors: one working in fiction and one in nonfiction. It was created to recognize editors who have demonstrated an extraordinary contribution to the field of feature editing by supporting the creative development and career trajectory of emerging editors pursuing a career editing independent, cinematic work.
This year, we are thrilled to recognize Pamela Martin as the recipient of the 2024 Adobe Mentorship Award for Fiction and Kristina Motwani as the recipient of the 2024 Adobe Mentorship Award for Nonfiction.
Pam and Kristina shared their thoughts about their craft and the importance of community in their own careers:
Pamela Martin
Thank you Sundance and Adobe for granting me the Mentorship Award for Fiction. This appeared like a ray of sunshine during a very challenging job, and literally brought me to tears. It’s a huge reminder to me that what matters most are the people we touch and help along the way. In this spirit I’d like to begin by telling you about some of the people who gave me good advice at the beginning of my career, people I won’t forget for the time they gave to mentor me.
Click here to read Pamela’s full speech.
Kristina Motwani
First off I want to say how honored I am to receive this award, thank you to Sundance and Adobe and of course to everyone who nominated me as well as everyone who has supported me throughout the years.
Click here to read Kristina’s full speech.
Pamela Martin is a feature film editor who has earned Academy Award nominations for Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard and for David O. Russell’s gritty 2010 boxing biopic The Fighter. Both films also earned her American Cinema Editors “Eddie” nominations, including a win for King Richard for Best Dramatic Feature Editing. She was previously nominated for the ACE honor for her editing on another Oscar-nominated Best Picture, Little Miss Sunshine, in 2006. Her upcoming film, Bob Marley: One Love, reunites Martin with director Rei Green. Some of her other credits include Downhill, Seberg, Operation Finale, Battle of the Sexes, The Free State of Jones, Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, Hitchcock, Ruby Sparks, Youth in Revolt, Weeds, Saved!, How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog, Slums of Beverly Hills, The House of Yes, The Substance of Fire, and Spanking the Monkey.
Kristina Motwani is an award-winning film editor, producer, writer, and story consultant working in San Francisco. Motwani’s verité documentary style strives to give intimate portraits of real people and the films she edited have been honored with Peabody, Emmy and festival awards including the 2021 Sundance Institute Jonathan Oppenheim Edit Award.
