This year’s annual Sundance Film Festival saw extraordinary creative work across dramatic and documentary features, short films, and episodic content. The Sundance Film Festival is well-known for funneling and supporting artistic talent through Sundance institute programs, fellowships, and grants.

While on the ground in Park City, Utah, filmmaker Joe Peeler discussed his route to being a Sundance director with The Hollywood Reporter. Peeler and his co-director, Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, received a U.S. documentary special jury award for freedom of expression for their film Bad Press. The film follows rogue reporter Angel Ellis as she fights to expose her government’s corruption amidst the censorship of the free press in Muscogee Nation.

Peeler told THR he started as a barista at the Acura Studio Lounge in Park City.

“It is very exciting and feels very surreal,” Peeler said, “And also very weird to come from a place where I felt like I was on the outskirts of the industry, making coffee for all the film teams coming in every morning to now being here this year, having arrived as a filmmaker in a way. It’s very nice. But what I have not forgotten is that view of the entire festival, the excitement of being here but also knowing about all the hard work that goes into everything. I know what it’s like to have dumped ice out on the curb after a long shift, you know?”

Peeler continued to build up his resume by editing various short films, features, and series, including a short film, The Lion’s Mouth Opens, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014.

Peeler continued, “As a filmmaker, you make a movie in a vacuum and you don’t know what is going to happen with it… With Bad Press, we were always aiming for Sundance because we imagined that it would provide the best future for our film. So it’s amazing to be here and that it happened to coincide with the return of the in-person festival. It’s all just very surreal.”