With the 2025 Sundance Film Festival underway, Utah leaders, locals and longtime attendees are making a ultimate push — that would embody paying tens of millions of {dollars} — to maintain the world-renowned movie pageant as its administrators contemplate uprooting.
Thousands of festivalgoers affixed shiny yellow stickers to their winter coats that learn “Keep Sundance in Utah” in a last-ditch effort to persuade pageant management and state officers to maintain it in Park City, its dwelling of 41 years.
Gov. Spencer Cox stated beforehand that Utah wouldn’t throw as a lot cash on the pageant as different states hoping to lure it away. Now his workplace is urging the Legislature to carve out $3 million for Sundance within the state funds, weeks earlier than the impartial movie pageant is anticipated to select a house for the following decade.
It might retain a small presence in picturesque Park City and middle itself in close by Salt Lake City, or transfer to a different finalist — Cincinnati, Ohio, or Boulder, Colorado — starting in 2027.
“Sundance is Utah, and Utah is Sundance. You can’t actually separate these two,” Cox said. “This is your home, and we desperately hope it will be your home forever.”
Festival Director Eugene Hernandez advised reporters final week that that they had not made a ultimate choice. An announcement is anticipated this 12 months by early spring.
Colorado is making an attempt to additional sweeten its supply. The state is contemplating laws giving as much as $34 million in tax incentives to movie festivals like Sundance by 2036 — on high of the $1.5 million in funds already accredited to lure the Utah pageant to its neighboring state.
Cincinnati accredited a decision allocating $2.5 million to Sundance if pageant leaders relocate to southwest Ohio. Yet cash might not be the last word draw.
Sundance leaders say the pageant has outgrown the ski city it helped placed on the map a long time in the past, they usually fear it has developed an air of exclusivity that takes the main focus away from the movies. An splendid dwelling would make Sundance extra centralized, inexpensive and accessible to all who recognize impartial movie.
Some festivalgoers and trade leaders fear Sundance would lose its id exterior its idyllic mountain hometown.
Roger and Carin Ehrenberg, main donors to the pageant, stated they might cease attending often if the pageant was exterior Utah. Sundance is a “magical experience” for the New York City philanthropists, they stated, due largely to the ambiance in Park City.
“If it goes to Cincinnati, maybe once in a blue moon we would go, but it wouldn’t be a regular thing,” Carin Ehrenberg said. “For us, it’ll lose its appeal.”
The couple stated they might doubtless proceed to donate even when they didn’t attend.
Nineteen years of fond recollections at Sundance helped encourage Dr. Rhonda Taubin to relocate her household from Atlanta to Heber City — Park City’s neighboring city. She has no ties to the movie trade however has turn out to be a fervent advocate for retaining the pageant in her new dwelling state.
This 12 months, she and her associates distributed 1000’s of “Keep Sundance in Utah” stickers — and one other that learn “NOhio for Sundance” — to point out the pageant how a lot it means to the local people.
“I really am not a movie buff, but my other girlfriends are, and being able to share all that we’ve been through as women, as mothers, as wives, as daughters, I don’t want it to end,” Taubin stated. “We watch provocative movies that make us talk and think about things that maybe we’ve never thought about before. Utah would be at a huge loss without those conversations.”
If Sundance stays in Utah, the pageant’s former director John Cooper stated main changes are wanted to enhance transportation between Salt Lake City and Park City and make lodging for filmmakers extra inexpensive.
Cooper, who led the pageant from 2009 to 2020, stated he could be unhappy to see Sundance shift away from actor and filmmaker Robert Redford’s unique imaginative and prescient. Its very identify comes from Redford’s character within the 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“I felt like my role was to be a keeper of the flame for Robert Redford and his legacy,” Cooper told The Associated Press. “The mountains of Utah, this was his vision. It’s weird to say ‘Sundance in Ohio.’ But I think it could go anywhere. What it does for a community is so strong.”
On the pink carpet this week, many had been break up on whether or not Sundance ought to keep or go.
Actor Elijah Wood urged the pageant to stay in Park City, saying the situation is a part of its DNA.
Others had been open to it relocating. Actor Tessa Thompson, who serves on the Sundance Institute’s board of trustees, stated the pageant might preserve its id in a brand new metropolis.
“I think that Sundance has more to do with the spirit and community, and I think that’s evergreen,” Thompson said. “Regardless of where Sundance is, Sundance will always be.”
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