Sundance 2026: At the Crossroads

Wilfred Okiche reports from the Sundance Film Festival, which is taking place in Park City for the last time.

After some four decades in the resort town of Park City, Utah, the Sundance film festival bid a fond and final farewell to its long state home. With pre-pandemic crowds hitting around a hundred thousand, the festival had simply outgrown its hosts, become a strain on the city’s resources. Prohibitive costs of lodging in the village discouraged younger and curious visitors who would otherwise love to key in to the festival’s spirit of discovery.

Next year the premiere festival for independent cinema in all of North America takes up residence in Boulder, another mountain town in Colorado. This move has been years in the making and many Sundance regulars have welcomed it with mixed feelings. But with last year’s passing of founder, actor Robert Redford, it feels like the appropriate time to let go. Redford reportedly gave his blessings for the move before his death.

What has it been like on ground for the final merry go round in Park City?

A bit muted. And not just in terms of the low-profile films in the program or the slow trickle of distribution deals. This year has been the warmest Sundance on record in about six years with only one day of scant snowfall during the ten days celebration. Venues have been condensed, with the festival losing the iconic Egyptian theater which is now repurposed to host concerts. A hostile sign outside the venue asked festival visitors and attendees to stay away.

The studios have figured out ways to maximize their presence at Sundance anyway. Sometimes this involves looking back to the glory days. Fox Searchlight returned with Little Miss Sunshine (2006) for a special 20th anniversary screening as part of the Park City Legacy program, curated to celebrate some of the festival’s biggest successes. Guillermo del Toro presented a 4k restoration of his debut feature, Cronos (1992) as part of this program and was hosted to a star-studded reception by his new home, Netflix.

Speaking of, the streamer continued the awards season hunt at Sundance by hosting a screenwriting masterclass with Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, co-writers of Train Dreams. Netflix acquired Train Dreams at last year’s festival and guided the film to four Oscar nominations including adapted screenplay.

Bentley and Kwedar opened up about meeting after college, bonding over a shared interest in the US-Mexico border and becoming best friends while finding their way into the film industry. They also gave some insight into their process, wrestling with Denis Johnson’s stream of consciousness style novella for about three years. Bentley observed of this unique challenge, “If you try to take a classic three-act structure approach to it, then you kill what is special about the novella.”

The journey to finding Johnson’s voice took them to the Idaho panhandle in the Pacific northwest where the story was set and where the book was written. Bentley and Kwedar walked the same grounds as Johnson and his wife, as they sought a way into the world he created. Then they put it all away and tried to figure out what spoke to them the most. Kwedar offers, “Then the real task emerges of how do you get between, underneath and beyond the words. That is where the real dance of adaptation begins.”

A pessimist might fear that Train Dreams will be the last big Sundance success of its kind. What is Sundance for now that industry forces have shifted significantly from the days when films like Get Out (2017) and Little Miss Sunshine could make splashy debuts that sustain them through competitive sales, terrific box office and awards glory? Even the pandemic period Sundance that delivered record breaking sale for a title like Coda (2021) feels of another era? This year the sales have been super slow as the industry contracts and independent films continue to struggle at the box office.

Just like Coda before it, Beth de Araújo’s latest, Josephine emerged double winner of both the US Dramatic grand jury and audience prizes this year. But despite being headlined by stars like Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan, the well-reviewed drama about an 8-year-old girl who witnesses a criminal incident while out jogging, is yet to land distribution.

It would be unfair to expect a geographical relocation to correct these industry afflictions. But perhaps a fresh start in a college town helps refresh Sundance as a bellwether where younger audiences determine what is hot and what is next.