Variety & Audible’s Cocktails and Conversations panel at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival brought together journalist Ronan Farrow, Audible’s chief content officer Rachel Ghiazza and actors Juliette Lewis, André Holland and Mamoudou Athie to discuss storytelling for modern audiences. The panel discussion was moderated by Variety Executive Editor Brent Lang.
Farrow, who signed a deal with Audible last year and is the host of its upcoming investigative crime series “Not a Very Good Murderer,” championed long-form storytelling and urged creators not to be deterred by just how long it can take to get the story right.
“It’s an imperiled thing to put resources into stories that can take years and years to tell,” Farrow told his fellow panelists. “But sometimes complicated projects do demand that kind of time and that scale of resources, and it’s not a common thing to find people who believe in and understand both the story itself and the shape of a story.”
“If it happens to take a long time, those are the ones that are often worth taking the wide swing and betting big on,” he added. “I have made a career of trying to lean into those stories when I see them coming, even though they can feel like an overwhelming challenge.”
Lewis, who is pulling double duty at Sundance by starring in “By Design” and “Opus,” shared her opinion that the most impactful stories are the ones that connect emotionally to the audience, regardless of whether the story is being told through audio or visual mediums.
“It’s the emotional connection to any story for me,” she said. “Some people are connected on an intellectual level. I want to be moved, or have my beliefs suspended. I like mystery, I don’t like having everything explained to me. All of those things, it can be podcasts or music or movies.”
Holland is at Sundance not only as an actor but also as a producer on the movie “Love, Brooklyn.” When asked if any particular person has helped shape his approach to storytelling, the actor cited the indie filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. They worked together on the basketball drama “High Flying Bird.”
“He taught me a number of things, but particularly about efficiency and community,” Holland said. “All of his films are made with more or less the same group of people, and they’re done in super efficient ways.”
Holland continued, “I feel a sense of optimism when we think about community and locking arms with each other and what we can make together. ‘Love, Brooklyn’ is an example of a community coming together to make a piece of work.”
As Audible’s chief content officer, Ghiazza is tasked with deciding which artists and creatives to support and collaborate with. She said that mission is a group effort that’s guided by novelty.
“We wanna create something that moves, something that’s different, something that you can’t just find,” she said. “We have the ability to work with people who are taking risks, doing something different, and because of the format, we’re able to take time to let something develop into what it should be.”
Watch the full Variety & Audible’s Cocktails and Conversations panel in the video above.