Longtime festivalgoers say the final Sundance in Utah may also be their last

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Attendees at this year’s Sundance Film Festival could not stand in line, step onto a shuttle bus or walk into a lounge without hearing one common question: “Will you go to the festival when it moves to Boulder?”

Butch Ward has been a Sundance regular since the early ’90s, but like many longtime festivalgoers who fell in love with its charming mountain hometown of Park City, he said he won’t be following Sundance to its new setting in Colorado next year.

The media professional from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, considers this the last year of the festival in its true form, “because a Sundance outside Utah just isn’t Sundance.”

That sentiment was shared by many attendees who had found their happy place at the Utah festival.

A group of women walked down Main Street on Saturday wearing yellow scarves that read “Our last Sundance 2026.” Another festivalgoer with a film reel balanced atop her head held a sign dubbing this “the last Sundance.”

“It’s not just a resistance to change,” said Suzie Taylor, an actor who has been coming to Sundance on and off since 1997. “Robert Redford’s vision was rooted here. And isn’t it poetic that he passed right before the last one?”

For Julie Nunis, the joy of Sundance is grounded in the tradition Redford created in Park City more than four decades ago. The actor from Los Angeles has come to the festival nearly every year since 2001 and said she doesn’t want to experience it any other way.

Redford, who died in September at age 89, established the festival and development programs for filmmakers in the Utah mountains as a haven for independent storytelling far from the pressures of Hollywood. Before his death, Redford, who attended the University of Colorado Boulder, gave his blessing for the festival to relocate.

Boulder emerged victorious from a yearlong search in which numerous U.S. cities vied to host the nation’s premier independent film festival. Sundance organizers decided to search for a new home because they said the festival had outgrown the ski town it helped put on the map and developed an air of exclusivity that took focus away from the films.

Some film professionals and volunteers said they were willing to give Boulder a try but worried Sundance could lose its identity outside its longtime home.

Lauren Garcia, who has come from Seattle to volunteer at Sundance for the past six years, said curiosity may lead her to Boulder for future festivals. She described feeling a sadness lingering over the final Utah festival and wondered if Redford’s death means it’s time for Sundance to close this chapter.

“How is the festival going to express itself in a new place and continue his legacy? It’s a huge question mark,” said Garcia, an anthropologist. “The truth is, it’s never going to be the same now that he’s gone.”

Redford’s daughter, Amy Redford, who serves on the Sundance Institute’s board of trustees, said she’s excited about the transition, even if it comes with a steep learning curve.

Nik Dodani, an actor and filmmaker passionate about telling LGBTQ+ stories, said he’s excited to experience the festival in a new state that embraces diversity, but he worries the departure will create a “vacuum” of those stories in Utah.

Amy Redford assures that won’t be the case.

The piece of her father’s legacy that she said meant the most to him — the institute’s lab programs for emerging screenwriters and directors — will remain in Utah, at the resort he founded, about 34 miles (54 kilometers) south of Park City. Filmmakers will continue to “create the civil discourse that we really need to be having in the state,” she said.

“Boulder, Colorado, will be a new adventure. It will feel like our beginnings when we were trying to figure things out, and that will have an important impact on what we do,” she told The Associated Press. “But the way that we meet artists where they need to be, well, that evolves out of a heartbeat that is here” in Utah.

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