Slamdance On the Road Film Tour returns with an Unstoppable force.
For the second year, the independent film festival, which started in 1995 in Park City and moved to Los Angeles in 2025, will take another cross-country expedition to showcase films from its Unstoppable program, which sheds light on subjects, themes and filmmakers with visible and non-visable disabilities.
The first stop is May 12 and 13 at the Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas, 111 E. Broadway in Salt Lake City, said Peter Baxter, Slamdance Group co-founder.
“Returning to Utah is always important to Slamdance,” he said. “It’s where we came from, so it’s like a homecoming in that sense.”
Slamdance first partnered with Salt Lake Film Society last year and met its strategic projects manager, Maddie Jones, who became the event’s point person.
“Our (Chief Executive Officer) Tori Baker, through a former board chair, had connected with Peter, specifically because, even though Utah lost Slamdance, we felt there was magic in Unstoppable,” Jones said. “She was like, ‘I think I want to do a disability film festival,’ and I was like, ‘I can take that over.’”
Opening Night will feature a screening of a short French film, “Leveret Road,” which premiered February at this year’s Slamdance Festival, Jones said.
“‘Leveret Road’” specifically highlights neurodiversity content with what we’re doing with KultureCity, whose goal is to make every screening and experience out in the world accessible to the one-in-four people who have sensory disabilities,” she said.
The night’s headline film will be Tanner Christensen’s “STANDOUT: The Ben Kjar Story,” which won Slamdance’s 2025 George Starks Spirit of Slamdance Award.
The Utah-based documentary about Kjar, an All-American wrestler and motivational speaker who was born with Crouzon syndrome.
“We could not get the theatrical run of the film for whatever reason, so when I talked with Tanner, he said he’d been wanting it to play at the Broadway,” Jones said. “And now we get to.”
Christensen and Kjar and others will be present for a post-screening discussion, Jones said.
The May 13 events will be divided in two, according to Jones.
“We’ll do a 4 p.m. screening, and the feature will be ‘The Tallest Dwarf,’” she said.
The documentary by Julie Wyman addresses dwarf identity, partial dwarfness and height-altering pharmaceuticals, Jones said..
“The thing I love about this film is that it offers different opinions on disability and whether or not you should get medical intervention to cure a disability,” she said. “That’s a big conversation in the disability community — where does medical intervention and choices connect and conflict with identity.”
While the story of “The Tallest Dwarf,” in itself, is captivating, the sound design is “quite astonishing,” Baxter said.
“We often focus on the writers, directors and the actors, but one of the reasons why this film is great is because of the sound work,” he said.
It so happens that the sound was designed by James Lebrecht, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2020 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award-winning documentary, “Crip Camp,” Baxter said.
“He’s a big supporter of Slamdance’s Unstoppable, and his work helped lift ‘The Tallest Dwarf’ into something quite special,” he said. “We want to also support those artists who work below the line, creating independent films and the craft that goes into that.”
In addition, the film also spotlights a “lovely” parent-child conversation, Jones said.
“Parent-child relationships in the disability community are quite complicated, and this highlights that conversation in new and different ways,” she said.
Aisha Amin’s “Contours,” a short film in American Sign Language, starring Lauren Ridloff that won the Slamdance’s 2025 Narrative Shorts Grand Jury Prize Honorable Mention, will precede “The Tallest Dwarf,” Jones said.
“We pair every feature film with a short or two, to allow different disability conversations to happen in tandem and highlight different disabled experiences with the audience,” she said.
The second half of May 13’s programming will be a 7 p.m. screening of Ross Kauffman’s short film, “Language of Care,” which looks at the University of Utah’s deaf and diabetes program, Jones said.
“We’ll have some of the scientists and community members connected with that film in for a Q and A,” she said. “Then we have another short, ‘BEAR,’ (by Kate Hammer) that offers a neurodivergent look at ADHD.”
The evening’s headline film will be “You Look Fine,” Slamdance’s 2026 Unstoppable Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award winner by comedian J. Snow.
“It’s (a documentary) about his journey with sickle cell and his struggles in the medical world,” Jones said.
Sickle cell is a blood disorder that can cause chronic anemia and organ damage.
“J. Snow is a very accomplished comedian and writer who has worked on HBO shows and has won some BET awards,” Jones said. “He’ll be at the Q and A, so I think we’ll facilitate some very lovely conversations and experiences we’ll get to see on screen.”
Selecting the films for the tour was fairly easy, Baxter said.
“Quite simply we asked filmmakers if they wanted to take part and if they were able to be present to some extent,” he said. “So at each of the locations we’ll have filmmaker presence, (and) we’re going to create a film-festival environment where we’ll have Q and As involving the filmmakers, something the audiences will really enjoy.”
Jones and the Salt Lake Film Society also had some say in which films to screen.
“I work with the disability studies department at the University of Utah, the Disability Law Center and with Filmmakers with Disabilities, and I connected Slamdance team with a collection of people in the local disability community,” she said. “We were all able to sit in a group and discuss which films we wanted to program and prioritize from the Unstoppable program.”
The idea for the On the Road Film Tour stems from Slamdance’s creed of introducing independent film to larger audiences, Baxter said.
“As you know we have moved our festival to Los Angeles, and we had a great start and audience turnout last year,” he said. “Our audience grew significantly this year from 2025. And we’re always keeping in mind how we can expand our audience elsewhere.”
Slamdance started its Unstoppable program in 2021, and Baxter and his staff felt the importance of showcasing these films and artists to audiences that may not have the opportunity to see them.
“I think through establishing ourselves in Utah since 1995 after all of those years in creating the identity we have and discovering these great new filmmakers who go on to change our culture, it’s always been important for us to support Slamdance filmmakers outside of our main festival venue,” he said.
Other venues on the tour include:
- Stowe Storytelling Lab, in Stowe, Vermont — June 7
- Roxy Theater, New York City, New York — June 27-28
- The Little Theater, Rochester, New York — July 10
- The Coolidge Theater, Boston, Massachusetts — July 12
- Gardena Theater, Gardena, California — July 17
- The Tara Theater, Atlanta, Georgia — July 25-26
“With collaborators who are inclusive of doing this type of work from a local level, we are able to build our audiences,” Baxter said. “With the Stowe Storytelling Lab, we are trying to bring back (film) exhibition and, hopefully, kickstart a new festival there as well. So, this tour isn’t just helping filmmakers, but helping organizers re-establish a festival event in the future.”
Baxter is grateful for the support and partnership with the Salt Lake Film Society, which was instrumental in establishing the Unstoppable On the Road program last year.
“What I think is incredible about working with Salt Lake Film Society and Maddie is how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” he said. “The idea of an arthouse with an individual like Maddie, who is dedicated to this cause of supporting these filmmakers and films, can elevate Unstoppable.”
Last year was a year of learning, said Jones, a lifelong ambulatory wheelchair user who is very much a part of Utah’s disabled community.
“Last year we did an overall accessibility check and (saw) where we could improve,” she said. “I had been working there for a year and never thought to make sure everything was the correct height for someone who was in a wheelchair. I never thought to check the soda machine or the ticketing system. So, it was us figuring out what this could look like at the Salt Lake Film Society.”
Jones’ goal going forward is to make the event not only bigger, but ensuring it will match broader accessibility goals.
“I think we soared with it this year because we did a seating renovation at the Broadway, and accessibility was a huge priority,” she said. “I’m excited to show off our brand-new accessible theaters at Unstoppable and show this is a welcoming space year-round.”
Slamdance On the Road Film Tour
- When: May 12 and 13
- Where: Salt Lake Film Society, 111 E. Broadway, Salt Lake City
- Web: slamdance.com/slamdance-on-the-road-2026