The University of Sundance

10:46 PM PST 1/19/2011 by Tim Appelo

For three decades, the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab has widened its global reach — and turned unknowns from Lisa Cholodenko to Darren Aronofsky into stars.

Each year, 2,500 hopeful filmmakers from Scranton to Southeast Asia submit scripts to the Sundance Institute hoping to score one of 12 spots in the organization’s 30-year-old Screenwriters Lab. Each one no doubt dreams of becoming the next Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko or Debra Granik, whose breakout films were cultivated in lab sessions. But the competition is fierce: About half of the dozen slots are self-selected, with the rest referred by Sundance alums or film school and festival professionals.