‘Sundance is rooted in Utah,’ says festival director as he plans its last run in Park City

Eugene Hernandez said he knows, through emails and social media, how people felt when the Sundance Institute announced that the Sundance Film Festival will move to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027.

“I read enthusiasm, I read sadness, I read a variety of emotions,” said, Hernandez, the festival’s director, in his first interview with The Salt Lake Tribune since the Boulder announcement.

Now, with six months until the 2026 festival, Hernandez said his team is deep into planning what will be the last Utah. Part of that, he said, is working out how to honor the event’s 45-year Utah legacy, and assuring people that the nonprofit arts group that actor-filmmaker Robert Redford founded in 1981 will remain.

“Even though the festival is moving, Sundance is not moving,” Hernandez said. “Sundance is rooted in Utah.”

A third of the institute’s staff lives in Utah, he said. Many live in the Salt Lake City area and commute to Park City. (The majority of Sundance’s staff works at the institute’s southern California office.)

Michelle Satter, the founding director of Sundance’s filmmakers’ lab programs, is already making plans for the January screenwriters lab at its longtime home, the Sundance Mountain Resort in Provo Canyon, Hernandez said.

The June directors labs, which Redford started in 1981, didn’t happen at Sundance Mountain Resort the last two summers because of construction. (Redford sold the resort to a pair of high-end resort companies in 2020.) Instead, the institute took up an offer from the Colorado Film Commission to use the Stanley Hotel, the Rocky Mountain resort that inspired Stephen King to write “The Shining.”

“We want Sundance to continue in partnership with Utah, but we don’t have a long-term plan” for the labs, Hernandez said. “We didn’t do an RFP [request for proposals] for the labs,” he added, referring to the yearlong bidding process that led Sundance to choose Boulder to host the festival.

Last Utah festival loses some local support

There are signs that Utahns still want to maintain their connection with Sundance, even after the Boulder decision. Moviegoers snapped up all the free tickets the Sundance Institute gave out for Salt Lake City screenings of its annual Local Lens program last week — and the Park City screenings, though not filled, drew audiences.

“I hope people can look to [Local Lens] as an example of creating something that is really customized and bespoke, in partnership with our friends in Utah,” Hernandez said.

After the Boulder announcement, some of Utah’s political leaders expressed anger. Gov. Spencer Cox, for example, called the move “a mistake,” and said “one day, they’ll realize they left behind not just a place but their heritage.” He vowed to claw back the $3.5 million the Utah Legislature voted to give Sundance Institute for a 2027 festival in Utah.

The Salt Lake County Council voted in April to rescind its $150,000 general fund contribution to the 2026 festival. Money allocated to Sundance through the county’s ZAP funds still will be paid, and Sundance confirmed last week it will use the county-operated Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center as a venue next January.

In May, the Summit County Council voted to zero out the restaurant sales tax revenue it allocated to marketing the festival — a loss of at least $85,000 that a council subcommittee had recommended.

“We respect and understand the decisions of any officials,” Hernandez said. “They’re accountable to their constituents, so that’s totally respectable.”

Hernandez said that “as a nonprofit, we rely on a wide variety of support to be able to do the work that we do” — including institutions, donors, corporations and ticket sales. (The most recent data Sundance supplied to the Internal Revenue Service shows the institute brought in just over $45 million in revenue in 2023.)

How Sundance will say farewell

Celebrating Park City’s role in Sundance’s history is one goal next year, as Hernandez spelled out in an open letter to festival supporters last week.

The 2026 festival is scheduled to run Jan. 22 to Feb. 1, and the nuts-and-bolts will largely be the same as in past years: The festival will again screen 90 or so feature films, around 50 short films and a selection of episodic programming. And, for the last four days, the festival will offer at least half the features on the institute’s online portal.

Most familiar Park City venues will be in use, along with the return of the theater at The Yarrow hotel (now the DoubleTree). Two Salt Lake City venues — including the Rose Wagner and the Broadway Centre Cinemas — will be in use.

A notable omission is the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, whose marquee has been a festival icon for decades. It’s now exclusively a center for live performances, theater manager Randy Barton said last week, adding that he won’t install a projector again just for the last festival. Hernandez said Sundance is working on ways to commemorate The Egyptian’s festival history.

Park City’s Main Street will again be pedestrian-only during the event, which Hernandez said brought “energy and excitement” to Main Street in 2025. That change was introduced after a January terror attack in New Orleans, where a pickup plowed into a Bourbon Street crowd, killing 14.

The details of the festival’s Park City-themed programming is still in the works, Hernandez said.

One night will be devoted to celebrating Redford and his “vision” for independent films. The annual fundraising event — officials at Sundance prefer not to call it a “gala” — is set for Friday, July 23, at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley.

A personal connection to Park City

Park City’s role in the festival is older than the Sundance Institute.

First, the Utah/U.S. Film Festival started in Salt Lake City in 1978 before it later moved to Park City — at the suggestion of Redford’s old friend, director Sydney Pollack — in January 1981.

Redford launched the institute in the summer of that year. Sundance then took over the operations of what was the United States Film Festival in 1985 and changed the name to Sundance in 1991.

Hernandez first visited Park City in 1993, covering the Sundance Film Festival as a fresh-faced film journalist. The experience, he said, changed his life.

There, he met fellow journalist Mark Rabinowitz, and the two got to talking about the need for a news outlet that focused on the independent film scene. In 1996, they launched IndieWire, which has become a leading news outlet in the movie industry.

IndieWire’s upcoming 30th anniversary, like Sundance’s last ride in Utah, is “a moment where I stop and reflect,” Hernandez said. The 2026 festival, he said, “invites us to reflect, to honor a legacy, to honor [Redford’s] vision.”

Six months away, Hernandez said, it’s impossible to say what the 2026 festival will look like, because of an element still to be decided: The movies. He and the programming team have already started watching some of the thousands of films expected to be submitted.

Sundance is, Hernandez says frequently, “a festival of global discovery.” No matter where it’s held, he said, “it’s not really about us — it’s about the artists we invite, who not only entrust us to show their films, but they’re going to travel across the world to be there and stand on the stage and unveil it for the very first time to an audience.”

Staging the last Sundance Film Festival in Utah, he said, “is a moment that weighs heavy on people. It weighs heavy on me. … We feel a part of this community, even as the festival’s evolution takes it to a new place.”

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