The US film industry's first major gathering since wildfires devastated Los Angeles begins Thursday at Sundance, where Olivia Colman and John Lithgow will kick off the indie movie festival under somber circumstances.

Hollywood's annual pilgrimage to the Rocky Mountains to debut the coming year's top indie films is taking place two weeks after blazes killed more than two dozen people and brought the US entertainment capital to a halt.

Festival chiefs spoke at length with filmmakers "who lost homes or were displaced" by the fires before deciding to press ahead, said Sundance director Eugene Hernandez.

Organizers heard "harrowing stories of people running out of their homes, evacuating... with their hard drives under their arms" to ensure their films survived, he told AFP.

Among those were the filmmakers behind "Didn't Die," an indie zombie movie about survivors podcasting to an ever-dwindling........

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