Tabitha Jackson

Tabitha Jackson (born ) is a British film and television executive. Since February 2026 she has directed Film Forum, a nonprofit cinema in New York City. She ran the Sundance Film Festival from 2020 to 2022, becoming the first woman and the first person of color to hold that post.

Jackson spent more than 20 years working in London, at the BBC and then Channel 4, and was an executive producer on Film4 documentaries. She joined Sundance Institute, which runs the festival, in 2013, and directed its Documentary Film Program until her appointment as festival director. The Grierson Trust gave her its BBC Grierson Trustees' Award in 2021.

Early life and education Born in about 1970, Jackson grew up in a village in rural England. Her adoptive parents were white and later divorced. She has described herself as a British woman of African descent, specifically Nigerian, and has said that growing up mixed race in a white family in a rural village taught her to move between groups, an experience she has connected to her interest in documentary and to her view of whose stories get told.

Career BBC and Channel 4 Jackson began her career as a researcher, producer and director at the BBC. She spent more than 20 years working in London, moving from the BBC to Channel 4, where she was a commissioning editor with responsibility for arts, performance and animation, and later head of arts and performance. Her executive producer credits at Film4 include the Nick Cave film 20,000 Days on Earth.

Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Sundance Institute hired Jackson in 2013 to direct its Documentary Film Program, which she led until 2020. The role covered grant-making to documentary filmmakers and the Institute's Edit and Story Lab. On taking over the program, Jackson said she did not want the genre to become "the preserve of the elite", open only to those who could spend years raising money to make films. No woman and no person of color had headed the festival before.

In June 2022 the Institute announced that Jackson would step down after that year's Sundance Film Festival: London.

Fellowships In February 2024 the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School named Jackson, alongside Karin Chien and Amy Hobby, to the spring 2024 cohort of its Documentary Film in the Public Interest fellowship. She went on to hold fellowships at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and a Rockefeller Foundation residency.

Film Forum Film Forum, a four-screen nonprofit repertory and arthouse cinema in Manhattan, named Jackson its director in February 2026, and she took up the post on 23 February. A national search headed by the board chair, Gray Coleman, and Stella Strazdas produced the appointment. That year she also co-created the podcast The Film That Blew My Mind with John Cooper, her predecessor as Sundance festival director.

Selected credits Jackson was an executive producer on the following Film4 documentaries.

The Arbor (2010), directed by Clio Barnard The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011), directed by Mark Cousins The Imposter (2012), directed by Bart Layton The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012), directed by Sophie Fiennes 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard

Personal life Jackson married the documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson on the opening day of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. She lives near Film Forum in Greenwich Village.