Here at IndieWire HQ, we take Sundance pretty personally — after all, many of the earliest seeds of this publication were sowed at and around the festival and one of our own beloved co-founders, Eugene Hernandez, currently serves as the Sundance Film Festival director and head of public programming.
So when Sundance announced in April 2024 that it was in the process of leaving its long-time home in Park City, Utah, it was hard to imagine a bigger story for the IndieWire faithful. As the festival has navigated months and months of vetting new possible homes, we’ve been on the frontlines of tracking both personal opinions and professional concerns, while also parsing our own feelings about where the festival might land.
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Nearly a year into that process, we’ve finally got our answer: starting in 2027, the Sundance Film Festival will be based in Boulder, CO. For the staff of IndieWire, this choice offered a chance to look both forward and back, to consider what Sundance means now, and could mean in 2027 and beyond.
“Sundance is going to be fine and it will not be the same. That’s a feature, not a bug: Chances for reinvention at this level are rare,” IndieWire’s editor in chief and SVP Dana Harris-Bridson said. “Over the last 35 years or so, Sundance became mythic — a state of being that alternately delighted and annoyed its principals and ultimately became untenable. Boulder provides a setting that’s not radically different from its original home, but that physical reboot is a singular opportunity for Sundance to change the narrative. Independent film, and the culture around it, has changed. You don’t have to pull up stakes to represent that shift, but the festival’s historical romance also made it very difficult to alter that trajectory.”
She added, “With Boulder, Sundance has the familiarity of a small town at high altitude, at lower prices. I hope the festival takes advantage of that comfort zone and puts its energies into exploring how this new chapter can represent the best of independent film as it is, not as it was.”
With biz on the brain, our own publisher and SVP (and a Sundance attendee for over two decades) James Israel, added, “Having attended the Sundance Film Festival every year since 2002, I’m excited for this new chapter for Sundance. Boulder will be a fine new home to continue to celebrate the creative spirit and ethos of the Sundance community. IndieWire is thrilled to continue our longtime support and commitment of the festival as an official sponsor and look forward to the exciting new opportunities for us and our partners in Colorado.”
Atmosphere at the IndieWire Sundance Studio, Presented by DropboxIndieWire via Getty Images
Chief film critic David Ehrlich, who I personally made return to Park City in 2025 for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, was characteristically cautious in his early take on the move. “Sundance is moving from Utah to Colorado, which is basically the same state but with better politics. It’s cold, people ski, there are direct flights from New York… maybe the lower elevation will result in slightly more grounded premiere reactions, but other than that, I’m not sure how relocating will significantly impact a festival that was already experiencing something of an identity crisis,” he wrote me.
He added, “I hope it’s a boon to the local economy (my sense, and my hope, is that the people of Park City will emerge unscathed), and I hope that the film industry shows up and revitalizes an event that could use a fresh spark, but my immediate sense is that the future of Sundance — whatever that might be — would be largely the same no matter where the festival took place.”
Editor at large Anne Thompson (who first started attending the festival in 1987, missing only a handful of editions in the interim) was more effusive. “Boulder is a strong choice for Sundance,” she told me. “It keeps the Western mountain ethos and landscape, and doesn’t move into a red or purple city but rather a blue university town. There are ski resorts in driving distance for those who seek them! And it’s near an airport hub, Denver. Boulder retains a bit of the exotic, which would not have been true of the more prosaic Salt Lake City or Cincinnati. I can’t wait to go to Sundance Boulder!”
Our digital director Christian Blauvelt, perpetually an example of cooler heads prevailing, offered an even assessment. “A colleague in the broader entertainment industry who’s been to Sundance multiple times expressed to me last year the peril of changing the cornerstone of a brand’s identity,” he wrote to me. “He suggested looking at the British monarchy — how much has its luster, its reputation, its impact, its status as an eternal fetish object diminished since the Queen died in 2022? A lot. He suggested that Sundance leaving Park City would have a similar result for the festival. I might agree if Sundance had not chosen another cozy Western town in the mountains to sub in for Park City.”
Essentially, he argued, “Boulder is both a bold choice and a safe choice, which probably makes it the perfect choice. The fact is, Sundance’s luster was already diminishing — being untenably expensive can do that. Boulder can polish that shine right back up to glittering fashion, without making everyone feel like they have to part with an armful of gold to partake in it.”
Atmosphere at the IndieWire Chili Party at Sundance held at The Park on January 26, 2025 in Park City, UtahClayton Chase
Awards editor Marcus Jones turned to other festivals as inspiration for this next chapter. He told me, “As meaningful as it was to get a chance to experience Sundance in its original home of Park City, Utah, I think Boulder is a move that provides so much opportunity. Attending other festivals like SCAD Savannah Film Festival or Virginia Film Festival, that are also organized around college towns, I have seen filmmakers be much keener on engaging with the audience knowing that the location provides an inherent educational lean to Q&As, and students honestly ask the best questions.”
He added, “Given how the rest of the year the Sundance Institute is focused on its developmental programs for future filmmakers, a focus on tapping into the next generation of cinephiles is already part of the festival’s DNA. Hopefully, that part of the work that the festival does gets highlighted more, now that the price of attendance is presumably lowered. Sidenote, just on a basic level, it is fun for the festival to still be in the Mountain Time Zone.”
Our VP of features strategy, Chris O’Falt, struck the most thoughtful tone, wondering how the relative magic of Park City will translate. “That out-of-the-ordinary and specialness of that environment is vital, and needed now more than ever,” he wrote me. “It is in that snowy, sunny, high-altitude buzz that gatekeepers of all stripes dream, ‘Can this movie find an audience?’ or ‘Is this a new talent I want to work with?’ The Sundance audiences actively wanting to see what’s next and rooting to see something special (why else make the trip?). Executives and critics, including my beloved peers at IndieWire, can claim they objectively make the same judgments from a private screening room, or the less-than-ideal watermarked streaming link, but the collective magical thinking of the Sundance environment is a powerful boost, especially for those seeing four to five movies into a day. Independent film needs that springy platform.”
Boulder, COJustin Bilancieri
He continued, “What we don’t know yet, is what Boulder offered that assured Sundance they can carve out a festival with that same small-town sense you are rubbing shoulders with tight-knit indie film community, while also accommodating the needs of the festival’s partners. And chances are it’ll take 2027-28 just for that to get situated. We’re going to have to have patience. But I trust the people who built Sundance to have made that evaluation if they found the right municipal partner and were able to strike the right deal. And from the outside looking in, having visited Boulder a few times — with its surrounding natural beauty, artsy college vibe (CU Boulder is 31 percent of the population), and it being a walkable, non-strip mall town — it strikes me as the right base to rebuild.”
As for me? If you’ve ever been subjected to my thoughts on Sundance, you know they can get a little emotional. Sundance was the first out of town festival I ever attended, way back in 2010, before I even worked at IndieWire (I was a lowly freelancer at the time, I paid my own way and used my own PTO from my then-day job; I don’t regret a dollar or a day). It’s always held an incredibly special place in my heart, enough that I’ve made it my business to go every single year since 2010 (save, of course, for 2021 and 2022, when I enthusiastically attended from home). That’s 14 years of my life spent on the ground in Park City, math-ed out to about 110 total days.
I know how to navigate Sundance, but as the years have ticked by, it’s become clear that even that hard-won familiarity and affection couldn’t mask the realities, mostly that’s it’s too damn expensive and too damn small to accommodate the very people, projects, and ideas it is meant to. No one truly indie could afford the kind of Sundance trip I personally financed in 2010. I know that firsthand.
In short: things had to change, and while a wholesale move is about as big a change as you can imagine, I’ve spent the last year and change acclimating myself to this idea. I’m comfortable with it now.
Is Sundance more than a place? Is Sundance really an ethos? And one that can relocated to another town? I hope so. I’d like to think so. And so, I will be approaching 2027 in Colorado with optimism. That’s what inspired this move, isn’t it? The belief that Sundance can not just survive, but thrive? Let’s see.
You can read more about the other two finalists who were in the mix to play home to Sundance right here. The 2026 Sundance Film Festival, the final edition to take place in Park City, Utah, will unfold January 22 – February 1, 2026.
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