This year marks the last Utah edition of the US’s largest independent film festival, and the first without the beating heart of the Sundance Kid himself. On March 27, 2025, the Sundance Institute, the non-profit dedicated to the promotion and growth of independent artists, formally announced it will be moving to Boulder, Colorado, next year, ending an over-40-year run at its current home in Park City, Utah. On top of that, 2025 became an even bigger year of change for the organization as its founder, Robert Redford, passed away at 89 on Sept. 16, 2025. Going into this year’s festival, everyone knew Sundance was on a path of major change.
As a first-time Sundance attendee, there’s a mixed bag of emotions floating in the mountain air. Of course, there’s the freshness and excitement of experiencing a festival for the first time, one that I’ve always dreamed of attending. There’s also the recognition and understanding that something so closely intertwined with a city, a state, and a culture is coming to an end. Theater staff, volunteers, business owners, and festivalgoers who have spent their entire lives in Utah attending and contributing to this event recognize it’s the end of an era. Through this diary series, I hope to share a bit of insight into the movies of Sundance 2026, but also the people, the city, and the festival as an entity in transition.
During the annual press welcome event, we were greeted with impassioned remarks from Sundance Institute leadership, including Redford’s daughter, Amy Redford, as well as Ebs Burnough, Eugene Hernandez, Michelle Satter, Kim Yutani, and John Nein. They reminisced about their careers with Sundance, recalled their long-lasting memories and first impressions of the festival, and recommitted themselves to the clear, simple mission of sharing everybody’s stories outlined by Robert Redford all those years ago.
As a press correspondent of the festival and an entertainment journalist at large, the first day of the festival was packed to the brim with buzz and excitement. Landing on Jan. 22, all eyes were not only on the impending premieres and navigating a packed festival slate, but also wide-eyed at 6:30 a.m. local time for the announcement of the Academy Award nominations.
There were many surprises across the 20-minute live YouTube-streamed event, but in the backdrop of Park City, certain nominations loomed large. All five nominees in the Documentary Feature category (The Alabama Solution, Come See Me in the Good Light, Cutting Through Rocks, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, and The Perfect Neighbor) played at Sundance the year before. Sundance has long been a platform for premiering nonfiction storytelling, the first step in a well-trodden pipeline toward the Academy Awards. Other Sundance 2025 titles grabbing nominations included Train Dreams, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and The Ugly Stepsister. Even Best Director nominees Ryan Coogler, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Chloé Zhao have long been associated with and mentees of the Sundance Institute’s lab programs.
While these announcements are a testament to the Sundance Institute’s capacity to shape independent cinema and the voices behind it over the last four decades, there’s still a bittersweet piece of the puzzle. All screenings have a short video tribute to Robert Redford before the movie begins, and the Main Street that millions of people have grown to love will host conversations on independent cinema for the last time.
Fittingly, the first official public screening of the festival was titled The Last First: Winter K2, a documentary about extreme mountaineering in the age of social media. You can’t help but feel a bit of cheekiness at play from the programmers when Amir Bar-Lev’s film entered the lineup. It was one of many Day One premieres, and it lives in the legacy of every festival kickoff before it. But it is, also, Park City’s “last first.”
As I dive deeper into the festival, I will continue to not only cover the premieres, but also the atmosphere as Park City enters its final chapter. What’s all the buzz about Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan’s new film? Is this Charli XCX’s “moment”?
Update Courtesy of Danny Jarabek
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