Park City • For Phil Cox, getting a movie into the Sundance Film Festival is a pinnacle that filmmakers like him work hard to reach.
Then, it’s a matter of figuring out how to afford the trip. “It’s a joy, and it’s an incredible pressure,” said Cox, one of the directors of the documentary “Khartoum,” playing in Park City and Salt Lake City this week.
“Indie filmmakers, we’ve lost and given everything to create something, and now I’m having to find $15,000 to $20,000 for accommodation and a house and food,” he said. “So there’s something wrong in the ethos there, even though we love what it represents.”
Robert Machoian, a Utah filmmaker who wrote the screenplay for the festival film “Omaha,” said he is fond of Park City for “the smallness, the intimacy of it.” And Jesse Moss, a San Francisco-based filmmaker who has been attending Sundance since 1998, said its presence in Park City “is so imprinted on my experience.” His first documentary, “The Overnighters,” premiered at the festival in 2014.
“Driving up the mountain, coming into Park City, is very special,” Moss said. “I don’t know how easy it will be to recreate that.”
The possibility that Sundance will pull up stakes after 2026, when the Sundance Institute’s contract with Park City expires, has been a recurring conversation at this year’s event.
The nonprofit arts group started a bidding process last year to explore options for a new home, beginning in 2027. More than a dozen cities showed interest, and three finalists remain in the running: Boulder, Colorado; Cincinnati, Ohio; and a combined Salt Lake City/Park City bid.
If Utah wins, the bulk of the festival would relocate to Salt Lake City. A few events would remain in Park City, which has hosted the festival since 1981 — months before actor-filmmaker Robert Redford launched the institute, and four years before the institute took over what was then called the Utah/US Film Festival.
Sundance Institute officials expect to finalize and announce their decision in March.
The Salt Lake Tribune talked to people attending this year about their Sundance experiences — and how the festival’s pricey digs and increasing inconvenience still manages to feel like “something magical,” as Cox said.
How locals see Sundance
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Park City’s Main Street is closed to traffic as Sundance visitors walk the historic blocks on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025.
“It’s really entertaining every season to have [the festival] come around, but it’s also kind of a hassle,” said Sofia Mueller, a student at Park City High School.
The event, she said, “makes it so hard to literally just find parking in the morning,” creating a challenge “when people have to get to school.”
Still, it’s a cultural staple, she said. The festival brings a filmmaker to her school each year, giving students a chance to see impactful films and glean their messages. She recently saw a short film about a young immigrant and her family’s journey shortly after they arrived in the U.S.
“Especially in a community with so many people who have to come to live here and work here, these stories are so important,” she said.
Sofia’s mother, Marcela Mueller, said she met her husband at a Sundance party 23 years ago. If the festival leaves Park City, “it will be missed.”
Jacob Willford and Sean Madsen, two Utah filmmakers in their 20s, first attended Sundance on a field trip for the video program at Lehi’s Sky Ridge High School.
“Sundance is sick, because there’s so much film stuff that doesn’t make it to Hollywood and the theaters,” Willford said. “It’s cool to come and just watch stuff that’s from people that aren’t at the very top, because creatives are making really good stuff even if they have lower budgets and less exposure.”
If Sundance left Utah, Madsen said, he would miss the focus it brings to the state’s film industry — and the chance for Utah filmmakers to connect with others.
“Coming in person’s a different experience,” Willford said, though he appreciates that more than half of its movies can be screened online during the festival’s last four days. “Anyone who makes a film makes something they’re proud of. They want it displayed the best way possible.”
Jenny Mackenzie, an independent filmmaker and assistant professor of film production at Utah Valley University, has been coming to Sundance for 23 years. The vibe “is always incredible,” she said, but “there is sort of a chill in the air, because of the anxiety and the concern around Sundance leaving Utah.”
About two-thirds of the people who attend Sundance, Mackenzie said, are from Utah. “It is something the entire state looks forward to, because we are the audience,” she said. “Our audiences have been trained to watch films, to appreciate films.”
There has been a “sort of an underground movement” among Utah attendees to urge Sundance to stay, Mackenzie said. Yellow stickers have popped up around Park City this week that say “Keep Sundance in Utah.”
(Sean P. Means | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Park City resident wears a sticker, "Keep Sundance in Utah," at a Sundance Film Festival screening at the Eccles Theatre in Park City, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025.
Machoian, the “Omaha” screenwriter and a professor of photography at Brigham Young University, premiered his first feature as a director, “The Killing of Two Lovers,” at Sundance in 2020. He said it was the culmination of a career-long dream.
“It was a lot of years of refining my skills as a filmmaker, with a Sundance premiere as a goal,” Machoian said. “Sundance, while it’s very hard to get in — statistically, it’s almost impossible — it is a really good goal to set as a filmmaker. … You’re seeing what people are doing, and it does allow you to hone your craft, to eventually get here.”
Machoian said he hopes the festival “would stay at least in Salt Lake, so it could stay in proximity.” He said he doesn’t know what the film culture in Boulder or Cincinnati is like, or whether Sundance’s atmosphere would transfer over.
“There is an energy in Utah, an energy in Park City,” he said.
Amy Beth Aste, who has been attending Sundance for 28 years and has long been involved with the nonprofit Salt Lake Film Society, said she has noticed a difference this year.
“I feel like they’ve scaled everything way back,” Aste said, noting that Sundance is not showing movies at Prospector Square or the DoubleTree (formerly The Yarrow), as they have in past years — and are closing the Eccles Theatre, Park City’s biggest venue, after Tuesday.
The festival also has cut its Salt Lake City venues this year, she noted, with only the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center and two screens at the Broadway Centre Cinemas in use.
“I feel like, maybe, they’re just sort of phoning it in, and they’re just trying to save money until they move on to the next thing,” Aste said.
“It’s a mistake for them to move,” Aste added. Sundance, she said, will miss “the feeling of being trapped up here in the snow, being here with all the people. It’s a good small-town vibe. It’s not a big city.”
But, Aste said, “if Sundance is over us, I’m fine to be over it.”
How filmmakers see the festival
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sheldon Bradshaw with the Earthwings organization, meant to inspire education and conservation, holds Budo the eagle-owl on Main Street in Park City during the start of the Sundance Film Festival, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025.
Affordability alone, Cox said, warrants some rethinking by Sundance — and possibly a move. The co-director of “Khartoum” said he reached out to donors just to make the trip.
“Eight days’ accommodation for $7,000, it’s just crazy,” Cox said, noting that “I lost everything in this production in a war.” Cox, a Brit, worked with four Sudanese filmmakers and journalists to make “Khartoum,” chronicling the lives of five people who left Sudan after a war broke out there.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with Park City reaping the financial benefit from hosting, Cox said. “But there was an anarchy before, [and] that’s gone,” he said. “I do feel something has been lost, and I know today, people have to balance to exist. We need corporate stuff to be around, otherwise we can’t manage it.”
For Sundance to succeed, Cox said, “the community has to be part of it.” He’s not sure whether a bigger city, like Salt Lake City, would have the same atmosphere.
Jesse Moss, who is premiering “Middletown” this year, co-directed with Amanda McBaine, warned against Sundance moving to a very big city.
“I sometimes feel like the festivals in San Francisco get swallowed by the city,” Moss said. “It’s very important that [the festival find] a community that’s big enough to support the festival, but not overwhelm it.”
Several big cities — including San Francisco, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon — were eliminated in earlier phases of the bid process.
“Sundance has built such a loyal community that they will follow the festival and the organization where it goes, I imagine,” Moss said. “I want the institution to do what’s best for the institution.”
Berlin-based producer Fred Burle, who is attending Sundance for the first time, said “it’s nice to be in a place that has so much history, and it would be nice to just stay here, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be worse if it goes elsewhere.”
Burle is a co-producer on director Ira Sachs’ drama “Peter Hujar’s Day.” If accommodations in Park City were cheaper, Burle said, he could have brought more of his film’s team to celebrate its premiere. (Sachs is part of Sundance’s Park City history. Several of his films have premiered at the festival, and he has won the Grand Jury Prize twice; his father, Ira Sachs Sr., built and owned the Yarrow — now the DoubleTree.)
The festival, Burle said, “is going to continue to be relevant anyways, no matter where it takes place. So, [I’m] just looking forward to the next venue if they really don’t manage to stay here.”
Julien Razafindranaly, a sales agent for films who also is based in Berlin, agreed that “the main issue” for Sundance is “that it’s so expensive to come here.”
“When you’re an up-and-coming filmmaker, either from the U.S. or from abroad, it’s very costly to come here, so a lot of people cannot afford it anymore, which is a bit of a shame, because obviously you want the struggling filmmakers of today.”
The expense of attending Sundance also affects the goal of an inclusive festival, Razafindranaly said.
“It’s important for as [many] people as possible to be able to attend the festival,” he said. “Especially if you’re coming from less privileged families or neighborhoods, clearly those people are not going to be here in Park City.”
Steven Beer, a New York entertainment attorney who has been involved with Sundance for three decades, said he is not opposed to any of the venue options Sundance is considering.
“Independent film people are especially resilient, and they’re leaning into the future,” Beer said. “This was a great chapter, but it’s clear that maybe the festival has outgrown Park City.”
Beer added, “I put a lot of trust in the Sundance Institute and I think that they’ll make good choices.”
Documentary filmmaker Roger Ross Williams, a Sundance veteran, recalled his first Sundance in 1994. He went with his friend Mary Harron, who had directed her first feature, “I Shot Andy Warhol.”
“We took off our shoes, and went to parties in condos,” Williams said. “It just felt so cozy and real.”
Now, he said, he is “so emotionally connected to Park City.”
“There’s nothing better when it starts to snow,” Williams said. “Filmmakers are uptight and they’re tense, and the snow takes away that intensity. And it’s such a magical, incredible place.”
What Sundance officials are saying
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Park City’s Main Street is closed to traffic as Sundance visitors walk the historic blocks on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025.
Officials at the Sundance Institute have been careful during the festival not to give any hints about how the site selection process is going. They talk about the festival’s more than 40 years in Park City, but also say they are looking to the festival’s future.
Actor Tessa Thompson, who is on the Sundance Institute’s board of trustees, said the selection process “heightens your understanding of what Sundance is.”
Thompson, known for her roles in the “Creed” films and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, said that “there’s something — a spirit of Sundance — that will be evergreen and will exist regardless of where it physically is placed. Will there be infrastructural changes? Yes, of course.”
But, she added, “I think there’s been a real sharpening — particularly in this current moment, globally and certainly domestically — in the need for real support of the arts, a need for real robust and varied stories that are accessible to people,” Thompson said. “It makes Sundance really have to step up.”
Ebs Burnough, who chairs the institute’s board of trustees, said there is no one factor that will decide which bid wins.
“There are probably 10 different elements that go into this equation,” Burnough said. “I wish it were as easy as saying, ‘the place with the best accommodations, the place with the best X, Y or Z.’”
The festival’s director, Eugene Hernandez, has touted its mission of “global discovery” each time he is introduced a movie in Park City.
“At the same time, there’s so much richness in that … history that we honor and celebrate,” Hernandez said. “And Park City is part of that history, the state of Utah is part of that history.”
Filmmaker Amy Redford, a member of Sundance’s board of trustees and founder Robert Redford’s daughter, stressed that “the only reason this organization has survived all these years is because we’ve stayed agile.”
“We’ve had to. We’re in service to our artists,” she said, “we’ll always be in service to our artists, and if we keep our true north to be that, we’ll be OK.”
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