Sundance festival kicks off under shadow of LA wildfires, with J-Lo, Cumberbatch, and poignant films on resilience.

CALIFORNIA — The US film industry's first major gathering since wildfires devastated Los Angeles begins today at Sundance, where Olivia Colman and John Lithgow will kick off the indie movie festival under somber circumstances.

Hollywood's annual pilgrimage to the Rocky Mountains to debut the coming year's top indie films is taking place two weeks after blazes killed more than two dozen people and brought the US entertainment capital to a halt.

Festival chiefs spoke at length with filmmakers "who lost homes or were displaced" by the fires before deciding to press ahead, said Sundance director Eugene Hernandez.

Organizers heard "harrowing stories of people running out of their homes, evacuating... with their hard drives under their arms" to ensure their films survived, he told AFP.

Among those were the filmmakers behind "Didn't Die," an indie zombie movie about survivors podcasting to an ever-dwindling human population, which was partly shot in the director and producers' now-destroyed Altadena homes.

"The parallels are intense," director Meera Menon told movie trade outlet Deadline.

"The main characters are fleeing catastrophe after catastrophe... and we were fleeing our home," she said.

Also among the 88 features being screened in Utah's Park City is "Rebuilding," starring Josh O'Connor as a rancher who loses everything in a wildfire.

"It takes on an added poignance," said Hernandez.

"It's an incredible film, and one that we felt was important to show, based on that spirit of resilience," said Sundance programming director Kim Yutani.