By Hannah Schoenbaum, The Related Press
PARK CITY, Utah — With the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant underway, Utah leaders, locals and longtime attendees are making a closing push — one that would embrace paying thousands and thousands of {dollars} — to maintain the world-renowned movie competition as its administrators take into account uprooting.
Hundreds of festivalgoers affixed shiny yellow stickers to their winter coats that learn “Preserve Sundance in Utah” in a last-ditch effort to persuade competition management and state officers to maintain it in Park Metropolis, its residence of 41 years.
Gov. Spencer Cox mentioned beforehand that Utah wouldn’t throw as a lot cash on the competition 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 finances, weeks earlier than the impartial movie competition is predicted to select a house for the following decade.
It might retain a small presence in picturesque Park Metropolis and heart itself in close by Salt Lake Metropolis, or transfer to a different finalist — Cincinnati, Ohio, or Boulder, Colorado — starting in 2027.
“Sundance is Utah, and Utah is Sundance. You may’t actually separate these two,” Cox mentioned. “That is your private home, and we desperately hope will probably be your private home eternally.”
Final 12 months’s competition generated about $132 million for the state of Utah, in line with Sundance’s 2024 financial affect report.
Pageant Director Eugene Hernandez informed reporters final week that they’d not made a closing determination. An announcement is predicted this 12 months by early spring.
Colorado is making an attempt to additional sweeten its provide. The state is contemplating laws giving as much as $34 million in tax incentives to movie festivals like Sundance via 2036 — on high of the $1.5 million in funds already accepted to lure the Utah competition to its neighboring state.
Cincinnati accepted a decision allocating $2.5 million to Sundance if it relocates to southwest Ohio. But cash will not be the last word draw.
Sundance leaders say the competition 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 target away from the movies. An excellent residence would make Sundance extra centralized, inexpensive and accessible to all who respect impartial movie.
However some festivalgoers and business leaders fear Sundance would lose its id outdoors its idyllic mountain hometown.
Roger and Carin Ehrenberg, main donors to the competition, mentioned they might cease attending often if the competition was outdoors Utah. Sundance is a “magical expertise” for the New York Metropolis philanthropists, they mentioned, due largely to the ambiance in Park Metropolis.
“If it goes to Cincinnati, possibly as soon as in a blue moon we might go, however it wouldn’t be an everyday factor,” Carin Ehrenberg mentioned. “For us, it’ll lose its attraction.”
The couple mentioned 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 Metropolis — Park Metropolis’s neighboring city. She has no ties to the movie business however has turn into a fervent advocate for conserving the competition in her new residence state.
This 12 months, she and her mates distributed 1000’s of “Preserve Sundance in Utah” stickers — and one other that learn “NOhio for Sundance” — to indicate the competition how a lot it means to the area people.
“I actually am not a film buff, however my different girlfriends are, and having the ability to share all that we’ve been via as ladies, as moms, as wives, as daughters, I don’t need it to finish,” Taubin mentioned. “We watch provocative films that make us discuss and take into consideration issues that possibly we’ve by no means thought of earlier than. Utah can be at an enormous loss with out these conversations.”
If Sundance stays in Utah, the competition’s former director John Cooper mentioned main changes are wanted to enhance transportation between Salt Lake Metropolis and Park Metropolis and make lodging for filmmakers extra inexpensive.
Cooper, who led the competition from 2009 to 2020, mentioned he can 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 Child.”
“I felt like my function was to be a keeper of the flame for Robert Redford and his legacy,” Cooper informed The Related Press. “The mountains of Utah, this was his imaginative and prescient. It’s bizarre to say ‘Sundance in Ohio.’ However I feel it might go anyplace. What it does for a group is so sturdy.”
On the purple carpet this week, many have been break up on whether or not Sundance ought to keep or go.
Actor Elijah Wooden urged the competition to stay in Park Metropolis, saying the placement is a part of its DNA.
Others have been open to it relocating. Actor Tessa Thompson, who serves on the Sundance Institute’s board of trustees, mentioned the competition might preserve its id in a brand new metropolis.
“I feel that Sundance has extra to do with the spirit and group, and I feel that’s evergreen,” Thompson mentioned. “No matter the place Sundance is, Sundance will all the time be.”
