MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The Sundance Film Festival is winding down. For the past 40 years, independent filmmakers, film buyers and film lovers have gathered in Park City, Utah. But after next year, NPR's Mandalit del Barco tells us, it's moving.
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MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Cinephiles are used to trudging through the snow and waiting out in the cold to be the first to watch new, independent movies. It's been a ritual in this ski resort town ever since actor and Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford came up with the idea, as he told me in 2017.
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ROBERT REDFORD: What if we start a film festival where at least filmmakers could come and see each other's work and form a community?
DEL BARCO: Redford said that first year, 1985, Sundance screened 25 feature films and a handful of documentaries to about a hundred people. Today, that community has grown to tens of thousands of people pouring in from around the world. Since COVID, even more have been watching online. Now, organizers say it's time to find a new host city.
EUGENE HERNANDEZ: We're exploring Salt Lake City, Utah; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Boulder, Colorado.
DEL BARCO: Festival director Eugene Hernandez says Sundance's latest 10-year lease in Park City will end next year. A few elements of the festival may remain in town, but Hernandez says festival organizers are looking for a new home that will preserve the scrappy character of the festival's roots. Some locals welcome the move. For 31 years, shop owner Ken Whipple has run Park City Jewelers on Main Street.
Do you want Sundance to stay here or not?
KEN WHIPPLE: No. They take up all the hotels. They take up all the restaurants. Traffic's really bad. My employees can't park. And then our regular skier tourists can't come in town for, like, that two-week period. And they're the ones that really have money.
DEL BARCO: Sky-high hotel room prices keep some festivalgoers away from this increasingly wealthy town, but many Sundancers are bummed.
LISA HUMMELBERG: I think it would be sad for the festival.
DEL BARCO: Before watching a festival film at the Egyptian Theatre, Park City resident Lisa Hummelberg handed out Keep Sundance in Utah stickers.
HUMMELBERG: I would say keep Sundance in Park City. They're thinking of Cincinnati. I don't think Cincinnati would be that fun. It will become more about the industry and less about the regular people, and that's what I don't want to see happen.
DEL BARCO: The festival's director of programming, Kim Yutani, says she knows people are anxious to find out where Sundance will be in 2027.
KIM YUTANI: To us, it feels like wherever we end up, we will still be the Sundance Film Festival.
DEL BARCO: The final choice of host city won't be announced till the end of winter.
Mandalit del Barco, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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