This is NOT about “A.I.” or the local film industry.

TL;DR: The Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (GOEO) quietly OK’d a $2 million grant for a nonprofit nobody’s heard of. The media made it sound like a done deal, but when I asked GOEO for more information, they told me no decision had been made. Yet, their own public records show that they approved it in January.

When I learned about the approval of a $2 million grant for “Nuovo Film Festival, Inc.,” two things stood out to me:

1. The lengths to which the GOEO went to hide what they were doing.

2. The completely redundant goals of the project

When articles started to appear in the local media toward the end of January, most of the attention was focused on “A.I.” hype, which members of the local film community latched onto with understandable frustration. Leaders of existing film-focused nonprofits—myself included—coordinated and reached out to the Nuovo “board” requesting a meeting. As of this post, to my knowledge, nothing has been scheduled.

The way it’s been framed in the press, this $2 million grant looks like a done deal. Some of my colleagues are already trying to make their peace with it. I commented on a post in the Utah Filmmakers™ Facebook group:

While most appear to have taken a “wait and see” position, I’ve been trying to find out what’s really going on. When headlines include phrases like “...Initiative gets $2 million from state,” “Utah invests $2 million in an AI-driven film ecosystem,” and “Utah invests $2M in AI cinema,” it creates the impression that this is something that has already happened. These are “news” articles, after all. Of course, headlines are often clickbait—hyperbole and oversimplification to get more ad impressions. Then we read in the articles themselves that the grant has only been “approved” or “...in a standard detail-gathering phase before the grant award is finalized.”

Some articles refer to the GOEO specifically as the agency behind the grant, others treat it as something incidental, as if it may or may not have anything to do with the grant, or as one local writer phrased it, “Working within the context of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity…” (emphasis added, also, F#*%¡&’ really!?!) There are references to “planners,” but no one is identified by name, nor is anyone directly quoted.

As far as I could tell, only one journalist appears to have even made an effort to verify what is still, as far as the press is concerned, just an industry rumor, having reached out to the GOEO and reporting “... board members did not respond to a request for comment.”

I’m not a journalist, but I used to moonlight as a stringer for a rural weekly newspaper, and I’ve acquired a few skills in finding public information for routine due diligence.

While there is nothing on the GOEO’s official website discussing or even referring to a $2 million grant, a diligent search on the Public Notice Website for the state of Utah can yield the following results:

➝ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/  ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/# (scrolling & clicking of embedded menus)   ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/publicbody/883.html    ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/notice/1058653.html     ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/1389373.docx

“1389373.docx” appears to be an automatically generated filename for the official minutes of the January 8 GOEO Board meeting—posted on February 10 and accompanying the agenda for the following meeting.

This document is the only written confirmation—but confirmation, nevertheless—that the GOEO Board unanimously approved a $2 million grant for “Nuovo Film Festival, Inc.”

Prior to February 10, the only way anyone could have learned about it would have been with a similar search yielding similar results:

➝ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/  ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/# (scrolling & clicking of embedded menus)   ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/publicbody/883.html    ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/notice/1049891.html     ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/1373837.m4a

“1373837.m4a” is the 50+minute audio recording of the January 8 GOEO Board meeting. The proposal, followed by a unanimous vote of approval, takes up about 12 minutes of the recording, starting around 32 minutes in.

Unlike the other items that were discussed, this was the only item lacking any information of substance on the written agenda—available on the same web page on January 6:

↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/notice/1049891.html     ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/1372663.pdf ⬅︎ (Agenda)

Perhaps none of the Board members felt the need to comment on the news since it’s all there in the official record. Short of a photo-op with a giant novelty check being handed to the grantee, it certainly seems like a done deal.

Still, I decided to ask for more details about the approval of this grant, since the only publicly available written information amounts to about a page and a half of text. I submitted a formal GRAMA Records Request, which the GOEO’s Records Officer denied, claiming—among other excuses, “...no decision has been made regarding this funding…”

This made no sense to me, so I appealed the denial to GOEO’s Executive Director, who also denied it, adding that the January 8 meeting “...concluded with the Board's recommendation that GOEO support the concept.” A statement that does not square with the verifiable facts in their own official records.

The January 8 agenda said “The Board will vote to approve one IAA grant.” Not a “concept.”

The official minutes of the meeting confirmed what was clearly understood on the audio recording from January 8, that the Board “...recommends Nuovo Film Festival Incorporated (NFI) for an Industrial Assistance Account grant of $2,000,000…” and the motion “...passed with unanimous consent.”

I’ve been told that I have an overdeveloped sense of fairness, and I’ve been known to be trusting of others, to a fault. I will take someone at the word if I haven’t been given a reason not to. So, if I find out someone has lied to me, after the fact, I might be a little more bothered by it than most.

I also have a very low tolerance for people who think they can get away with feeding me an obvious line of bullshit, and God help them if they lie to me when I already know the truth.

For a more in-depth look at all the facts and fibs I’ve been able to find about this matter, check out https://goeo.joepuente.org

A need for ethics & transparency

 Please note: The author is not a professional journalist, they just know how to access public information.

On January 8, 2026, the Business Development Board of the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (GOEO) held its monthly meeting in Salt Lake City. The agenda listed three items related to their role in promoting economic growth in Utah. Such items are typically accompanied by detailed information about costs to taxpayers and projected economic benefits, and such was the case for two (2) out of three (3) scheduled items that day. The single exception was an Industrial Assistance Account (IAA) grant with a very short—albeit prescient—description: “The Board will vote to approve one IAA grant.” (emphasis added)

While three motions worth millions of dollars were approved, only two of them were followed by press releases that day. Over the next five days, a total of three local news articles reported on the content of the press releases. It wouldn’t be until January 22—nearly two weeks after the GOEO meeting—that the Utah Review would publish an article by Les Roka about filmmaking in Utah “post-Sundance,” which reported:

“An alternative to establish a film festival to replace Sundance, a new Utah-based nonprofit (tentatively named Nuovo Film Festival, Inc.) has received $2 million funding to launch an initiative that would augment and extend the many components of the state’s filmmaking ecosystem.”

The source of the “$2 million funding” was not entirely clear. The article prominently featured the Utah Film Center, and its founder, Geralyn Dreyfous, quoted multiple times and referenced throughout, including the paragraphs that followed:

“Working within the context of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, planners have taken into account that the Sundance Institute and its year-round labs… will stay in Utah…Dreyfous explained that the Sundance Lab model would be used to expand filmmaking collaborations in the state with Silicon Slopes, Utah universities, the Nucleus Institute, and other industry partners…”(emphasis added)

“One objective is to cultivate Utah’s leadership in technological innovation in filmmaking, especially as new AI tools come into play. Citing now CGI and VFX technologies gave filmmakers fresh options to integrate them into their creative vision, Dreyfous, acknowledging that her position on AI might not be seen as a popular opinion among her colleagues and peers in the industry, it is important to explore how AI would fit responsibly and ethically in the creative environment.”(sic)

Were it not for that quasi-indirect reference to the GOEO, one might be hard pressed to find a connection between the state agency and a new (“nuovo” in Italian) Utah-based non-profit. The clichéd marketing references to “new AI tools” might even feel like a non-sequiter—unless one happens to have lingering questions about a recent grant that received neither a substantive agenda description nor any public announcement. Especially since the article only stated that the non-profit “received $2 million funding”(sic) and made no reference to what form it took—like a donation or a grant—making it even less likely for a casually informed citizen to know of the existence of any “dots,” to say nothing of having a reason to connect them.

The official minutes of the GOEO’s monthly board meetings are typically posted on the state’s Public Notice website a few days prior to the next meeting. Until then, the only way someone could make a connection between Roka’s article and the GOEO, would be to have listened to the 50+-minute recording of the board meeting itself. It was posted on the same day it took place—where the IAA grant is discussed for nearly twelve minutes. It takes up almost a quarter of the available audio, despite occupying only 2 short lines of text in a seven (7) page agenda.

The disparity between the time spent discussing the grant and the scant information provided to the public is striking. It suggests that, while the board understood the significance of the proposal, they were willing to obscure its true nature and implications, while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability, since all relevant data was, in fact, available to the public. It just happened to be in a format that was not readily searchable, with a nondescript filename (“1373837.m4a”), and required anyone wanting to access that specific data to download a digital audio file and play it. Thankfully, technology has progressed to the point where all those technical steps can take place in a new browser tab—but it still requires clicking the link, sitting still for nearly an hour, and listening. Most people won’t do that, but this writer will, and they have.

Around 32-minutes into the recording, it’s revealed that the grant in question was a one-time $2 million IAA award for an entity called “Nuovo Film Festival Inc.” (NFFI), pitched as a bold response to the departure of the Sundance Film Festival from Utah and an ambitious attempt to reassert the state’s place in the global film industry.

The pitch for NFFI leans heavily on marketing clichés and technology buzzwords. The objectives of this organization are described as a “forward-thinking approach” that will “keep Utah relevant in the film space,” “build on Utah’s legacy while embracing where the industry is going,” and “position Utah as the center of next-generation storytelling through AI-enabled filmmaking labs and the nation’s first AI-supported soundstage.”

Throughout the presentation, “AI” is invoked with the enthusiasm of a recent retiree trying desperately to sound hip to the younger generation, blissfully unaware of how all the fancy high-tech jargon he’s reciting falls flat and would fail to impress anyone who actually knew something about concepts like “vaporware” or remembers when the “dot-com” bubble burst in the early 2000s. If any of those people were in attendance at that meeting, they didn’t say anything.

They went on to claim Utah will “not only stay on the map, but lead in the emerging world of AI-driven film and content creation,” promising a transformation in production timelines and costs that would purportedly allow an $200 Million “Avenger” film to be made in nine months for $10 million—a statement that bears little resemblance to the economic realities of modern film production.

At the same time, the proposal repeatedly frames itself as “establishing an ecosystem” for filmmaking in Utah, as if such an ecosystem doesn’t already exist. In reality, Utah already has a robust film infrastructure and a dedicated state agency, the Utah Film Commission, whose mission is to promote the state as a destination for film production, administer incentives, and support local and visiting filmmakers. The Commission even registered the trademark, “Utah. America’s Film Set.®” The rhetoric around creating labs, boosting incentives, workforce training, and film tourism largely repackages work that existing organizations and vendors have been doing for years. The notion that Utah needs a new entity to “put Utah on the map” for filmmaking ignores a century of filmmaking history in Utah, the Film Commission’s ongoing efforts, and the undeniable success of the state’s Motion Picture Incentive programs.

The funding source for this grant makes the situation more troubling. During the meeting, a board member notes that the $2 million in question had been “previously allocated to Sundance” and that, with Sundance leaving Utah, the money had “come back.” This characterization glosses over the specific conditions the Utah Legislature attached to that funding. In S.B. 2, the New Fiscal Year Supplemental Appropriations Act for 2025, lawmakers earmarked $3.5 million for the Sundance Institute, but only on the condition that Sundance remained in Utah. The bill language explicitly states that GOEO “shall not disburse the funds provided for this purpose and shall allow them to lapse” if Sundance chooses to leave the state. In other words, the legislature did not authorize GOEO to repurpose those funds at its discretion. Once Sundance announced its move to Colorado and confirmed that its future festivals would no longer be hosted in Utah, the statute required that the appropriation lapse rather than be redirected.

By approving a $2 million grant that proponents themselves describe as using money previously allocated for Sundance, the GOEO board appears to have disregarded this legislative directive. Describing the funds as having “come back” implies a return of money that had gone out the door, when in reality the funds were contingent and never meant to be spent if Sundance left. The decision to treat those contingent dollars as a discretionary pool for a new project contradicts the statute’s clear intent and undermines the principle that executive agencies must follow the conditions set by the legislature. This is not a mere technical oversight; it is a substantive deviation from the rules governing the use of public money.

Compounding these concerns is the process’s opacity and the confusion surrounding the nonprofit entity that is supposed to receive and manage the funds. In the meeting, a representative claimed that the grant would be administered by a nonprofit organization with a board that includes high-profile industry figures and local leaders—of the six named individuals, only two had any notable connection to the entertainment industry.

A query using the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search Tool “did not return any results” for “Nuovo Film Festival, Inc.” Tax Exempt status is typically a requirement for nonprofit grant recipients, but Industrial Assistance Accounts may also be awarded to for-profit companies. Similar queries on transparency websites, including CharityCheck101.org and Candid.org, yielded similar results, but they will list nonprofits with or without a tax-exempt classification simply to confirm that they exist based on their federal Employer Identification Number (EIN)—which is also required for a business or charity to open a bank account, especially if one expects to receive any donations or grants.

An argument could be made that a nonprofit organization formed within the preceding year may still be in the process of obtaining its Tax Exempt Determination letter. However, it did not take long to find several examples of Utah nonprofit organizations registered in 2025 that have already obtained tax-exempt status. One of the most recent was formed in December, just over two months before this post was published.

The author concedes that an EIN may have been issued to Nuovo Film Festival, Inc., and that they have simply done nothing with it to warrant inclusion in any public databases. Regardless, if any entity that stands to receive a multi-million-dollar public grant is not properly established or its governance is unclear, it raises serious questions about due diligence and risk management.

All of this returns us to the core issue: transparency and ethics in the management of public funds. A $2 million grant is not a routine matter, and describing it on the agenda simply as “one IAA grant,” accompanied by the prescriptive, “The Board will vote to approve one IAA grant,” when a description would have been apropos, fails to meet even minimal standards of public disclosure. Omitting a press release for such a significant award, especially when other, smaller items receive public promotion, suggests an awareness that the decision might not withstand scrutiny. When an agency uses vague, bureaucratic language to obscure the nature of its actions—particularly when those actions appear to conflict with specific legislative instructions—it erodes public trust and undermines democratic oversight.

Transparent governance entails more than technical compliance with open meeting requirements; it demands clear, accurate, and forthright communication about how taxpayer dollars are being used and why certain entities are chosen as beneficiaries. It requires agencies to respect not only the letter of appropriations law but also the intent behind conditional funding and lapse provisions. In this case, the combination of buzzword-heavy justification, repackaging existing film infrastructure as novel innovation, questionable reuse of contingent legislative funds, and the absence of robust public communication points to a failure to fulfill that responsibility. The public has a right to expect that decisions about multi-million-dollar grants will be made openly, with full and honest disclosure—not hidden in plain sight behind innocuous boilerplate and evasive phrasing.

Current Revision: February 13, 2026

(Grammar corrections and language clarifications)