As the Sundance Film Festival bids farewell to its birthplace in Park City, Utah, the state’s governor, Spencer Cox, honored the indie showcase’s late founder, Robert Redford, in a welcome letter to attendees on Thursday.
“When Bob founded this festival decades ago, he didn’t just create a venue for film; he created a sanctuary for the ‘wild, the weird, and the wonderful.’ He believed that our rugged landscapes were the perfect backdrop for unbridled creativity,” Cox wrote. “Because of his vision, Utah became the epicenter of independent cinema, and the world became a richer place through the stories told here.”
Redford died in September at the age of 89 at the Utah ski area he bought in 1968 and named after his character in his most famous film, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Ten years after buying the ski area, Redford established the Sundance Film Festival, then known as the Utah/U.S. Film Festival, in Salt Lake City.
The festival would move to Park City in 1981 and be renamed the Sundance Film Festival in 1991. Over the decades, Sundance has become a cornerstone of the independent film landscape and has launched the filmmaking careers of directors like Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryan Coogler and Chloé Zhao, all of whom received multiple Oscar nominations this week.
But starting next year, Sundance will move across the state line to Boulder, Colo., where the festival has signed a 10-year hosting deal. In his memo, Cox described this year’s farewell show as “heavy with gratitude and reflection” for what Sundance and Redford have done to put Utah on the map in the world of cinema.
“While this marks our final year hosting the festival in Utah, the impact of the Redford era is permanent. His legacy is etched into our canyons and woven into the fabric of our culture. We are immensely proud to have been the home of Sundance Film Festival for so long, and we are honored to share this closing frame with you,” he wrote.
The 2026 Sundance Film Festival runs through Feb. 1.
