The 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s Favorite Award has been presented to “Come See Me in the Good Light,” a critically acclaimed documentary focusing on Colorado State Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson’s journey since getting an incurable cancer diagnosis. The winner, determined by audience vote, can go to any film that plays at the festival from any genre.

Gibson, who is considered the rock star of spoken-word poetry, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021. “At first I thought it was a stomach bug,” Gibson (they/them) says in the film. In their official role as Colorado’s poetry ambassador, the Boulder-based queer activist and author has been taking followers along on their cancer journey in writing.

The new film, directed by Ryan White (“Pamela, a Love Story”), follows Gibson and fellow poet Megan Falley as they go on an unexpectedly funny and poignant odyssey through love, life and mortality. Among the film’s producers are singers Brandi Carlile and Sara Bareilles (“Waitress”) and red-hot comedian (and former Denver resident) Tig Notaro, who talked up the film last week on the hit podcast “Smartless.”

“I told Ryan (and his team), ‘I can’t sell you on this person. You just have to do a deep dive – not even that deep – on Andrea Gibson.’ They called me three days later and they were like, ‘We’re in. They got on a plane, flew to Boulder and started filming.”

Gibson, Notaro went on, “is just a brilliant, mind-blowing poet. And this is a phenomenal documentary about a phenomenal person.”

“Come See Me in the Good Light” made its world premiere at Sundance, which closed Sunday in Park City, Utah. Bareilles and Kevin Nealon were among the celebrities attending the premiere screening.

“Festivalgoers embraced the humor and heartbreak of this intimate documentary, as it speaks to art and love and reminds us what it means to be alive as we face mortality,” said Kim Yutani, Sundance’s director of programming.

The prestigious film festival may be moving in 2027, and Boulder is one of three finalist cities.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, reached Wednesday by The Denver Gazette, said he was thrilled to add his congratulations to Gibson, whom Polis appointed to State Poet Laureate in September 2023. The Poet Laureate serves as an active advocate for poetry, literacy and literature by participating in readings at schools, libraries, festivals and other events across the state.

“I am proud of Andrea for sharing a very personal story with the world through this film,” Polis said. “As the son of a poet, I grew up surrounded by the impacts of the arts, which has strengthened my belief in the importance and value of the arts in Colorado.”

Polis’ mother is filmmaker and poet Susan Polis Schutz, who turned her poetry and her husband’s artwork into the Blue Mountain Arts greeting-card empire in 1971.

“I hope to see the film soon and have the opportunity to attend the Sundance Film Festival in Colorado starting in 2027,” Polis added.

Denver-based film critic Lisa Kennedy, writing for Variety, said the new documentary “comes as an unexpected and welcoming invitation to stay awhile, even play awhile.

“If that seems at odds with the deep pain, the arduous treatments and the medical assurances of an early death they face, the film disabuses viewers of that notion. There’s a closeness here that allows viewers to spend a year at the poets’ home in Longmont; to accompany the couple on oncologist visits and chemo treatments; and to hover around their bed as the pair ponder the silly and the utterly serious.”

Film critic Drew Burnett Gregory noted that Gibson typically tours and performs in large music venues much like a rock star. “But this film isn’t a straightforward artist portrait. It’s a tender look at two queer people in love and a celebration of the desire to live.”

Gibson is from Calais, Maine, and has lived in Boulder since 1999. Gibson is a four-time Denver Grand Slam Champion whose work focuses around a range of topics, including LGBTQIA+ issues, spirituality, feminism, mental health, gun reform and the dismantling of oppressive systems.

“I spent so much time writing about what was wrong with the world,” Gibson previously told The Denver Gazette. “Now, I write about what I dream the world can be.”

Tig Notaro’s Colorado roots

Notaro, a deadpan comic who has been nominated for both Emmy and Grammy awards for her standup work but is perhaps best known for “Star Trek: Discovery,” talked at length about her time in Denver as the featured guest on Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett’s “Smartless” podcast.

Notaro was managing her girlfriend’s folk-rock band in Denver before leaving for L.A. to try standup, “which had been my top-secret dream – even though I was shy,” Notaro said. “I spent my first two weeks in L.A. going to every open mic I could possibly go to.”

Once she got her bearings as a standup, Notaro was ready for the road. And she booked her very first out-of-town gig back here in Colorado at Wit’s End, a strip-mall comedy club in Westminster that closed in 2013. It was a snowy December week in the ‘burbs.

“I bombed the entire weekend,” she said. “Then, before the second show on Saturday, I hear the owner saying, ‘Where is our emergency fill-in comedian?’” Notaro assumed someone on the bill had fallen ill (or died). “Then he walks up to me and gives me my check and fires me,” she said. “It was so mortifying. It’s my first gig on the road. It’s the holiday season.”

As Notaro made the walk of shame to the parking lot, Notaro ran into friends who were standing in line to see her perform. “They were so excited to see me, and I said, ‘Oh, I was just fired.’ My comedy was so bad, it caused an emergency, and they are bringing in a fill-in comedian. They couldn’t even stomach me for that last night.”

So they all headed for the Mercury Cafe instead.

“It’s been a long road,” Notaro said with a laugh. “But I’m almost 30 years in.”