PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — With the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant underway, Utah leaders, locals and longtime attendees are making a last push — that would embody paying tens of millions of {dollars} — to maintain the world-renowned movie competition as its administrators contemplate uprooting.
Hundreds of festivalgoers affixed vibrant yellow stickers to their winter coats that learn “Hold Sundance in Utah” in a last-ditch effort to persuade competition management and state officers to maintain it in Park Metropolis, its dwelling of 41 years.
Gov. Spencer Cox stated 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 price range, weeks earlier than the impartial movie competition is predicted to choose a house for the subsequent decade.
It may 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 said. “This is your home, and we desperately hope it will be your home forever.”
Pageant Director Eugene Hernandez instructed reporters final week that that they had not made a last choice. An announcement is predicted this 12 months by early spring.
Colorado is attempting additional to sweeten its supply. The state is contemplating laws giving as much as $34 million in tax incentives to movie festivals like Sundance by way of 2036 — on high of the $1.5 million in funds already authorised to lure the Utah competition to its neighboring state.
Cincinnati authorised a decision allocating $2.5 million to Sundance if competition leaders relocate to southwest Ohio. But cash might not be the last word draw.
Sundance leaders say the competition has outgrown the ski city it helped placed on the map many years in the past, and so they fear it has developed an air of exclusivity that takes the main focus away from the movies. A super dwelling would make Sundance extra centralized, reasonably priced and accessible to all who respect impartial movie.
Some festivalgoers and business leaders fear Sundance would lose its identification outdoors its idyllic mountain hometown.
Roger and Carin Ehrenberg, main donors to the competition, stated they might cease attending often if the competition was outdoors Utah. Sundance is a “magical experience” for the New York Metropolis philanthropists, they stated, due largely to the ambiance in Park Metropolis.
“If it goes to Cincinnati, maybe once in a blue moon we would go, but it wouldn’t be a regular thing,” Carin Ehrenberg said. “For us, it’ll lose its appeal.”
The couple stated 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 holding the competition in her new dwelling state.
This 12 months, she and her associates distributed hundreds of “Keep 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 really am not a movie buff, but my other girlfriends are, and being able to share all that we’ve been through as women, as mothers, as wives, as daughters, I don’t want it to end,” Taubin stated. “We watch provocative movies that make us talk and think about things that maybe we’ve never thought about before. Utah would be at a huge loss without those conversations.”
If Sundance stays in Utah, the competition’s former director John Cooper stated main changes are wanted to enhance transportation between Salt Lake Metropolis and Park Metropolis and make lodging for filmmakers extra reasonably priced.
Cooper, who led the competition from 2009 to 2020, stated he could be unhappy to see Sundance shift away from actor and filmmaker Robert Redford’s authentic imaginative and prescient. It’s totally title comes from Redford’s character within the 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“I felt like my role was to be a keeper of the flame for Robert Redford and his legacy,” Cooper told The Associated Press. “The mountains of Utah, this was his vision. It’s weird to say ‘Sundance in Ohio.’ But I think it could go anywhere. What it does for a community is so strong.”
On the pink carpet this week, many have been cut up on whether or not Sundance ought to keep or go.
Actor Elijah Wooden urged the competition to stay in Park Metropolis, saying the situation 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, stated the competition may keep its identification in a brand new metropolis.
“I think that Sundance has more to do with the spirit and community, and I think that’s evergreen,” Thompson said. “Regardless of where Sundance is, Sundance will always be.”
