Cretton's short film, Short Term 12, premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize for U.S. Short Filmmaking. He wrote a feature-length adaptation of the short, which earned an Academy Nicholl Fellowship in 2010. Funding for the adaptation was difficult to procure, so Cretton wrote and directed his first feature-length film, I Am Not a Hipster. The film was an official selection at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and helped get Short Term 12 funded.