Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega on What Drew Them to Cathy Yan’s Dark Satire ‘The Gallerist’

Cathy Yan is back. And not a moment too soon.

The filmmaker has returned to the Sundance Film Festival with “The Gallerist,” a “wickedly fun, corrosive satire of the contemporary art world” (according to the Sundance program) that stars Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega and Zach Galifianakis, just in time for the festival’s last hurrah in Park City, Utah.

The last time she was at Sundance was 2018, with her debut feature “Dead Pigs.” In between her visits to snowy Utah, Yan was recruited into the superhero industrial complex with Warner Bros. and DC Comics’ “Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn),” directed an episode of HBO’s beloved “Succession,” and developed several projects that never saw the light of day (A24’s “Sour Heart” and FilmNation’s “The Freshening” among them).  

That makes “The Gallerist’s” debut at Sundance both a homecoming and a sigh of relief, with one of the most exciting filmmakers working today finally back with a new feature.

Yan told TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman at Sundance that the idea for “The Gallerist” came from her co-writer James Pedersen.

“I immediately just gravitated towards it, because I did feel like it was such a fun, entertaining, funny, exciting way to explore some of these themes that I’ve been obsessing over myself as a creative – these ideas around art and what is even considered art, and what is considered valuable in art and who gets to decide that and who tells those stories?” Yan explained.

The script, Yan said, hinged around a central idea – that there’s a dead body that somebody is trying to sell as art. “It really just didn’t seem that far-fetched, to be honest,” said Yan. “I love satire as a means to create social commentary in a fun and palatable way. And it seemed like a really great opportunity to explore those themes in an exciting cinematic way.”

Portman, who also produced “The Gallerist,” plays the title character. “She is really trying to make her own way with this gallery, with this opening, and Kiki, who’s Jenna’s character, is her literal partner,” Portman explained.

“I thought was very apt and also very resonant – the slippery slope of compromise, of things happening, and then you’d be like, I could do that,” Portman said about what drew her to the project. “And then a little more, another push, maybe I could do that too. And then things can quickly snowball.”

Ortega described her character as Portman’s assistant who has “been working with her for a few years and grew up in the art world. Her aunt, who is played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, is this incredible art dealer who’s very, very esteemed, and has also just gotten out of prison. The years are going on, and the light is slowly starting to fade from [my character’s] eyes I think she, while she glorifies and completely idolizes this craft and this field of work, it also very quickly gets not glamorous, and with what happens in this film, I think it rots away.”

The film is set at  Art Basel Miami and the actors and filmmaker visited the Miami and Paris versions of the famous festival.

“It was quite foreign to me but now I feel like I know it very deeply,” said Portman of the art world.

The amazing cast of “The Gallerist” also includes Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Sterling K. Brown, Daniel Brühl, Youssef Kerkour and Sundance 2026’s “it” girl – Charli XCX. So how did Yan put together such a starry cast for her movie?

“I think it’s the snowball effect – Natalie, you signed on first, and then Jenna, you were second. And then from there, it was like, come at us,” said Yan. “And then it becomes exciting, who else gets to be a part of this? And seeing partners and everyone levels up every time someone else comes in. I think part of it was not just me, but was the other cast. Daniel Brühl f was maybe the last to come on. And his role is not particularly large, but for such an established actor to even want to do something like that, I think it just speaks as much to Natalie and Jenna and the talent of everyone else before that.”

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