Kamas • Kristen Stewart has been here before.
As she made her way through the press line, talking to journalist after journalist Thursday night outside a gala at the opening night of 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Stewart looked like a veteran. That was evident from the highlight reel the festival screened inside the fundraising gala at the DeJoria Center in Kamas, before peers, admirers and donors.
Stewart made her movie debut in 2001, at age 11, but Sundance arguably is responsible for much of her success — not just such Hollywood movies as “Panic Room” and the “Twilight” saga.
Stewart made her first appearance at Sundance in 2004, at age 13, in the drama “Speak.” This year, she has two movies in the festival, both offbeat romances: “Love Me” and “Love Lies Bleeding.” In between, she’s come to Park City with such films as “Adventureland,” “Welcome to the Rileys,” “The Runaways,” “Camp X-Ray” and “Lizzie.”
Stewart, who was given the festival’s Visionary Award at Thursday’s gala, underlined how much she admires Sundance.
“This is just a place full of ‘yes’ in a world full of ‘no,’” Stewart said. “Sundance is the f---ing s---. I love being here.”
Stewart wasn’t the only person honored at Thursday’s gala. “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan was given the Sundance Institute’s Trailblazer Award. Filmmakers Celine Song (”Past Lives”) and Maite Alberdi (”The Eternal Memory”) received the institute’s Vanguard Award for fiction and nonfiction, respectively. And Pat Mitchell, the retired head of PBS, was given a Vanguard Award for philanthropy.
Song said, “Sundance is the place that launched my career as a filmmaker.” The playwright-turned-director is favored to receive an Academy Award nomination or two next week for “Past Lives,” a semi-autobiographical drama that premiered at Sundance last year.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Robert Downey Jr,. Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas Nolan, on the red carpet before the Sundance Gala at the DeJoria Center in Kamas, on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024.
Nolan told a story of a man and his father skiing at Deer Valley, and happened on a whim into a screening of his second film, the thriller “Memento,” which played the festival in 2001.
On some level, he said, that still happens. “It’s a quarter of a century later and I’m still being f---ing discovered by Sundance,” Nolan said with a laugh.
Other filmmakers at the gala talked about Sundance’s significance in the 40 years that Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute has been running it.
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, a repeat visitor to Sundance (”American Hollow” in 1999, ”Last Days of Vietnam” in 2014, and this year with the docu-series “The Synanon Fix”), called the festival’s 40 years “the story of the little engine that could.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rory Kennedy and Mark Bailey, on the red carpet before the Sundance Gala at the DeJoria Center in Kamas, on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024.
“All along, there’s elements or forces that pull you in different directions. ‘We need to make money, we need to get this and that,’” Kennedy said. “But I think they have never lost their north star of filmmaking excellence, and supporting that, and celebrating it.”
Filmmaker Amy Redford, whose father founded the institute in 1981, called the festival “hugely important, because I think civil discourse is something that is probably going to be our salvation.”
Amy Redford, who lives in Utah, said the state “sometimes pushes back against progressive ideals, [but] it’s still incredibly welcoming to the idea of interesting thought. That’s something that I think will continue to happen, and I think it’s a very healthy thing … for the rest of the country.”
Amy Redford gave this aspirational wish: “I hope that we’ll be here for another 40 years.”
The festival continues Friday, through Jan. 28, with screenings at venues in Park City and Salt Lake City. Individual tickets are available at festival.sundance.org.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Amy Redford, on the red carpet before the Sundance Gala at the DeJoria Center in Kamas, on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024.
