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Sundance Film Festival will return to Utah, in person and online, in 2022

Sundance Institute announces dates for the festival’s return, after holding 2021′s event virtually

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The marquee of Park City's Egyptian Theatre marked the mostly online 2021 edition of the Sundance Film Festival. The Sundance Institute announced Thursday, May 13, 2021, that the 2022 festival will return to Park City and Salt Lake City venues, with a mix of in-person and online events.

The Sundance Film Festival is coming back to Park City in 2022.

In what’s essentially a “save the date” announcement, Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute said Thursday that it will be holding the 2022 Sundance Film Festival “in-person and online” from January 20-30, 2022.

“We can’t wait to return to Park City, Salt Lake City — and beyond — for next year’s Sundance Film Festival,” the announcement read.

The institute said it was “in the process of designing a safe and accessible festival” where “audiences and artists can come together to celebrate and discover new work, and each other.”

The 2021 Sundance Film Festival was held mostly online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with some socially distanced in-person screenings at drive-ins and other locations around the country — though none were held in the festival’s home state of Utah. The 2021 festival was shortened to seven days instead of the usual 11, showed 73 feature films instead of the usual 120 or so, and held its closing-night party in a virtual-reality space.

Festival organizers deemed the online festival a success, premiering such movies as “CODA,” a family drama starring Marlee Matlin that won a record four awards from the Sundance jury and audience. The festival also drew a larger audience online than previous festivals did in person, according to the institute’s estimates.