‘Thank you, Bob’: Filmmakers and actors including Hawke, DaCosta and Harrelson celebrate Redford’s legacy

Park City • Amy Redford looked out over the hundreds of diners at the Sundance Institute’s annual fundraiser on Friday night, and wondered how it would have been received by her father, the institute’s founder, Robert Redford.

“I can’t help but think of all the galas that my dad had no interest in showing up to, and I feel like you really actually might have enjoyed this one,” Amy Redford said.

The “gala” that organizers said wasn’t a gala — they used the words “celebration” and “tribute” — brought filmmakers and longtime supporters of the Sundance Institute to the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley to hear stories about Redford, who died in September at age 89.

Redford’s family didn’t hold a public memorial service for the actor, director and activist — so Friday’s event, coinciding with the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, may have been the closest thing to a wake.

“When my dad could have created an empire,” Amy Redford said, “he created a nest. The Sundance Institute was designed to support and protect and nourish [storytellers], and then to set [them] free.”

Actors and filmmakers — including a couple who became Academy Award nominees the day before — shared their memories of Redford’s attention to creative people and his vision for fostering independent storytelling.

Actor Ethan Hawke, who received an Oscar nomination for playing lyricist Lorenz Hart in 2025’s “Blue Moon,” told a story about auditioning for Redford’s “A River Runs Through It,” and being nervous about reciting a monologue for the actor-director.

When Hawke was done, he said Redford told him, “You just did a brilliant job, but you’re too young for this part, and I’m not going to cast you. But I want you to know that you’re going to have a wonderful career.”

Hawke continued: “A couple months later, he came to see me in a play in a 99-seat house, a $10 ticket. Robert Redford showed up.” Hawke added that Redford put him in a small uncredited part in “Quiz Show” in 1994, and a year later Sundance festival programmers chose “Before Sunrise,” a romance starring Hawke and Julie Delpy, as the opening-night film.

Actor Woody Harrelson, who co-starred with Redford in the 1992 drama “Indecent Proposal,” referenced that movie’s premise when he said Redford “was the only man on earth I’d sell my wife to. I also admit unabashedly that he’s the only man I’d return the money to, to take me for a night.”

Harrelson said that when he told his mother he had been cast opposite Redford, she immediately got on a plane to meet him — even though she was afraid to fly.

“I witnessed my mom become a 16-year-old schoolgirl, who did everything but squeal as she approached him on the set,” Harrelson said. “He was so sweet, and took the time to really talk with her. … I’ve never seen my mother so happy in her life, bubbling over with joy, and lust. That was weird.”

Chloé Zhao, who received Oscar nominations for directing and co-writing the adapted screenplay for “Hamnet,” received the institute’s Trailblazer Award. In her speech, she said that Sundance taught her that “trailblazing, or leadership, is not about dominance, it’s about interdependence.” She thanked Redford “for knowing the importance of interdependence both in nature and human nature.”

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who has premiered movies at the festival and served as one of the institute’s trustees, said one of her memories of Redford was “how slightly frustrated and annoyed he was when I would never call him ‘Bob.’” Instead, she used the more formal “Mr. Redford,” because my mom told me I’ve got to [address] people I respect [with] the ‘Mister’ in front.”

DuVernay added, “Mr. Redford understood that fear is contagious, but courage is also. And courage lives in a room called imagination, and imagination is not only what we need to make movies, it’s what we need to dream about a new world, a just world, for each and every one of us here.” She ended by saying that “tonight, for once and probably the only time I will say, ‘Thank you, Bob.’”

Documentary filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir, who received the institute’s Vanguard Award for nonfiction, called Sundance “a north star for me,” because “Robert Redford’s vision was radical in its simplicity, which was to trust artists and trust audiences, and create spaces for stories that don’t fit neatly into the mainstream and protect that space fiercely.”

Gandbhir received two Oscar nominations this week. One was for the documentary feature “The Perfect Neighbor,” about a neighborhood dispute in Florida that turned deadly; the movie debuted at last year’s festival. The other was in the documentary short category, for “The Devil Is Busy,” about a day at an Atlanta abortion clinic.

The Vanguard Award for fiction went to Nia DaCosta, who has two movies in theaters currently: “Hedda,” an adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play “Hedda Gabler,” starring Tessa Thompson; and “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” the continuation of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland horror series about people infected by a zombie-like “rage virus.”

DaCosta called Redford “a stunning human. He really saw you. People talk about being seen by a person, and he was someone who really saw you through your work.”

Thompson, an institute trustee, recalled meeting Redford at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab, where she had been cast to perform scenes from DaCosta’s first script, “Little Woods.”

“He arrived on a motorcycle wearing a leather jacket,” Thompson said. “Then we stood in a circle, all of us lab mates now. … For three hours we were blessed with this time that we were going to spend together as something that was sacred."

The lab attendees then went to the Owl Bar at the Sundance Mountain Resort, and “all the people on the mountain would flock to Redford’s table and they would try to gush on him. He had this really disarming way of always turning the conversation back to the person in question, and creating this spirit of real community.”

The institute introduced a new award at Friday’s event, named for its founder: The Robert Redford Luminary Award. The first recipients were Gyula Gazdag, the longtime artistic director of the institute’s lab programs, and actor-filmmaker Ed Harris, who has served as a lab adviser for more than 20 years.

The event ended with a surprise appearance by Broadway legend Patti LuPone, who sang Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young.”

The general festival audience will get a chance to pay their respects to Redford on Friday, Jan. 30. The festival has scheduled a screening, at 5:30 p.m. at The Ray in Park City, of Redford’s 1969 sports drama “Downhill Racer.” It was the first movie Redford produced, and he often said his bad experience with the studio releasing that film prompted some of the ideas that led to the Sundance Institute’s creation in 1981.