On Sunday, the Sundance Film Festival will pack up its projectors and vamoose from the tony ski town of Park City, Utah, where it’s minted the next great filmmakers for 45 years.
There was a palpable feeling of finality over the past two weeks. Sundance’s founder, Robert Redford, died in September, and an emotional video tribute to him got applause before every screening.
And I couldn’t sit down to eat a plate of pasta at Fuego without a Park City local stopping me mid-bite to say they’d been coming to the fest since Day One.
Well, now they can tell that tidbit to disinterested wealthy snowboarders.
Because next year, Sundance heads to Boulder, Colo., an artsy college community that National Geographic once named “the happiest city in America.” Just wait till a bunch of cranky coastal movie critics come to visit. That’ll knock their rating down a peg.
I truly hope the mountain-to-mountain move works. While Sundance ain’t as edgy as it used to be, it still uncovers smart, soulful and sometimes revelatory counter-programming to sequel-and-IP-obsessed Hollywood studios. It’s the antidote to “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”
“A Real Pain” and “Past Lives” were recent wonderful standouts. Best Picture Oscar nominee “Train Dreams” premiered here 12 months ago.
Even if you don’t care about independent films whatsoever, this festival regularly champions the future writers and directors of your favorite blockbusters.
Do you like the “Knives Out” movies? Rian Johnson got his big break at Sundance. Enjoy “Sinners” and “Black Panther”? Ditto Ryan Coogler. Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Wes Anderson. Sundance, Sundance, Sundance.
This year’s exciting find is writer-director Beth de Araújo, whose visceral gut-punch “Josephine,” about a little girl who witnesses a horrific crime in a San Francisco park, won both the grand jury prize and audience award.
Starring Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum, and headed next to Berlin, “Josephine” will be the festival’s most likely Oscar player.
There were actually quite a few strong movies among the 18 I caught — many of which were unusually funny. That’s the opposite of 2025, when the path to the Eccles Theater was tantamount to the green mile.
“Booksmart” director Olivia Wilde premiered her best film yet, “The Invite,” starring herself, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz. The sharp, four-star comedy, in which two clashing couples get messy at a cocktail party, had me laughing almost to the point of medical emergency.
The industry agreed. There was an old-fashioned bidding war for the mad movie, with A24 coming out on top. They reportedly plunked down more than $10 million to release Wilde’s wild ride in theaters. As they should.
Neon snapped up the horror flick “Leviticus.”
And Sony Pictures Classics bought the sublime “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!,” which has luminous Rinko Kikuchi play a tango-dancing Tokyo woman who gets her groove back, as well as the moving not-quite-romance “Bedford Park.”
Hopefully soon, we’ll hear about a deal for wacky and fantastical “Wicker,” starring Olivia Colman as a fairytale fishmonger who weds a basket that’s come to life — played by Alexander Skarsgård. It sounds insane, I know, but only Colman could smear mud on her face, marry some talking twigs and still charm us like a Corgi.
Were some movies abysmal? Of course! It wouldn’t be Sundance without some duds.
“Carousel,” starring Chris Pine and Jenny Slate, was a cinematic depressant that had me doing the Charlie Brown walk back to my hotel.
And despite its Oscar-winning cast, “The Gallerist” with Natalie Portman, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jenna Ortega proved an embarrassing, interminable dog about the pretentious art world.
Several reps from a distributor sitting to my right skedaddled after the first half hour of that one — and presumably not to make an offer.
It’s too soon to say if Boulder will work. Will the festival’s mythology of cinematic invention carry over to a totally new place? Will the same power players attend, sans happy memories of Park City parties and premieres? Will it still matter?
All I know is that there will be hits, there will be misses and there will be upset urbanites schlepping through the snow.
