Sundance has unveiled its roster of panels and special events, which this year will feature a number of philanthropists, activists and artists who support the festival’s goal of using art to effect social change.

Microfinance pioneer and Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus will sit down with education reformer Geoffrey Canada and environmental visionary Lester Brown to discuss new social and economic paradigms.

The Doctors Are In The House features rotating groups of industry experts, film-makers, and strategists discussing radical approaches to distribution.

Cinema Café promotes informal dialogue with film-makers and guests including on such topics as writing, creative collaboration and new Australian cinema. Among the guests are editor Walter Murch, author Russell Banks, actor Ryan Gosling and director Nicole Holofcener, whose Please Give gets its world premiere in Park City.

At The Lodge hosts a series of daily panels, among them a discussion on contemporary war reporting featuring Restrepo directors Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, Amit Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story), Andrei Nekrasov (Russian Lessons), and Mohamed Al-Daradji (Son Of Babylon).

The Next programme film-makers will talk about low and no-budget film-making, while Atlantic Philanthropies president and CEO Gara LaMarche is due to deliver a mini-keynote speech before a human rights round table with Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath (Enemies Of The People) and Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders).

New Frontier On Main panels explore the convergence of art and technology, while the film music roundtables analyse what it takes to make a successful film score and how to achieve a good relationship between director and composer.

Skateland composer Michael Penn and director Anthony Burns are scheduled to take part alongside Teenage Paparazzo composer David Torn and director Adrian Grenier, Austin Powers composer and Sundance Lab advisor George S Clinton, and March Of The Penguin scomposer and Sundance Lab advisor Alex Wurman.

Author and activist Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Bob Lynch from Americans For The Arts, Center For Constitutional Rights president Michael Ratner will be in attendance, as will artists such as Sam Taylor Wood, Anna Deavere Smith, Shirin Neshat, and Pippilotti Rist.