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Source: Jonathan Hickerson

An audience at Sundance 2017

US industry figures have reacted to Thursday’s news that Sundance Film Festival will relocate to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027.

The location change comes after a year-long search and means that after next January’s final edition in Park City, it will be goodbye to the Utah ski resort. For four decades Sundance in Park City has championed thousands of filmmakers and major breakouts like Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Dee Rees, Sian Heder, and Christopher Nolan.

Sony Picture Classics co-president Tom Bernard has been a mainstay at Park City down the years and the company’s many Sundance titles include An Education, Searching For Sugar Man, Central Station, Animal Kingdom, Jockey, Kneecap, and 2025 acquisitions Oh, Hi and East Of Wall.

“I’m thrilled to see that Sundance has made a choice to go to Boulder,” said Bernard. “The new audience they’re going to run into in Boulder is amazing. You’re going to have 10,000 new students every year available for the film festival. You’ll have closer to what Sundance had back in the early ‘80s. I’d love to see how they could incorporate a student festival with the university.”

The Sony Classics co-founder continued, “Sundance will have to step in to programme for this new audience. They’ll have the challenge of going back to the cutting-edge programming they had when they were starting out on the forefront of the independent scene, and now it’s even better because they will be as close to the ground as possible, to the audiences who are evolving and changing every year.

Kathleeen McInnis, a marketing expert, producer, and strategic publicist who has steered hundreds of filmmaking teams from around the world through Sundance, is pleased the festival is staying true to its roots.

“I’m happy Sundance was able to find a new home from which they can forge a redefined mission, and I’m very glad the festival will stay in the west where so much of its original ethos is rooted,” said McInnis, who first attended Sundance in 1990. “We have to wait to see how the organisation crafts its new profile before we truly understand what the move will mean on a larger scale.

“Having been to the festival every year for 36 years (except the pandemic cancellations), I have grown to think of Park City as home, at least as my festival home. The 2026 edition will be bittersweet in that light. It will mark the end of both a personal and professional chapter for me that was impactful, inspirational and aspirational.”

Anthony Bregman’s Likely Story has enjoyed breakout Sundance hits such as Sing Street, Our Idiot Brother and Thumbsucker. “Such a smart decision,” he said of the move. “I don’t envy the many complex issues the Sundance leaders had to balance out — but from my bird’s eye view, moving to Boulder is the brilliant solution that preserves the tone of the festival we all love.”

For Ted Hope, the co-founder of This Is That with Bregman, co-founder of Good Machine with James Schamus, and former co-head of movies at Amazon, Sundance has effected postive change and 

”Sundance is such a strong institution I honestly don’t think it matters where they move,” Hope said, ”provided they have true support and alignment of the community. What I find so inspiring is that so many cities wanted Sundance and made huge efforts to woo them.

”Cinema and community spirit are colossal economic drivers, but even more importantly, they bring us together and give us hope for transformative change. Truly nothing else has so positively changed the cinema ecosystem as Sundance. The real question should not be: ’What else can we build that can so significantly improve things?’ because there are many answers to that question.

Hope continued, ”Cities across the globe want to be the home of cultural change agents like Sundance – it is time for our industry to wake the F up and give them such plans. Where are the leaders to do that? Where are the cities offering those opportunities?”

The final word goes to Elvis & Nixon and The Butler producer and former sales agent Cassian Elwes, who co-founded alongside Christine Vachon and Lynette Howell Taylor the Horizon Award, an annual prize granted to two emerging female directors who win a trip to Sundance to network with the industry.

“The end of an era,” declared Elwes, whose Sundance producer credits include Mudbound and I Origins, and who also co-founded the Cassian Elwes Independent Screenwriting Fellowship with The Black List. “I understand the reasons why the festival is moving and Boulder is a good choice. Can’t help but feel sad that the relocation of Sundance is the end of an era that was filled with so many incredible memories.”

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