Sundance Shakeup: Has Price Pushed the Festival Off the Mountain?

Sundance, the flagship festival in the U.S. for indie filmmakers, is considering moving from the mountains to the Midwest. 

The festival founded by Robert Redford is facing a fork in the road as it considers leaving its snow-capped home of Park City, Utah in 2027 — and could end up in Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, Ohio or Boulder, Colorado.

The Rocky Mountains have served as a backdrop for the festival for decades and become synonymous with Sundance itself. And the festival may stay right where it is.

But Sundance, which has been running for 40 years each January, is confronting two stark realities that have led the Sundance Institute to explore other options. The festival has struggled to find funding in recent years, operating at a loss in two of the last three. In fiscal year 2023, which ends in August, the Institute reported losses of $6.2 million on revenues of $45.6 million against costs of nearly $52 million. 

And for many struggling indie filmmakers, the fancy ski town has simply become too pricey.

“There’s a big opportunity for growth, and there were just limited advantages in its current home,” Colorado film commissioner Donald Zuckerman told TheWrap. “Having to build all those theaters has to be phenomenally expensive, and there’s just no place to put the people.”

Both Boulder and Cincinnati say they are prepared to breathe fresh air into the festival, which has long prided itself on pushing the envelope for independent filmmaking. City officials there say they are eager to place their film industries on the world stage and give indie filmmakers a more financially viable, physically accessible, provocative and creatively fulfilling festival experience. 

But dedicated Sundance attendees are not convinced that the festival needs reinvention. And local Park City officials are making a bid to retain the event by fully combining it with facilities in neighboring Salt Lake City.

Over the past few years, the Institute has moved three of the festival’s 11 screening locations to downtown Salt Lake, which is 32 miles away. The city’s renewal bid initially framed itself as “Two Cities, One Experience,” but TheWrap has learned that if that bid is chosen, the festival will be anchored in Salt Lake City.

The festival’s losses in recent years illustrate the increasing cost for the Institute to maintain excellence in its current home, something the two-city model would hope to remedy by making it more affordable for organizers and attendees alike. 

“From the perspective of someone who goes to Sundance but does not work at the Institute, it does not feel like it needs reinvention,” a distribution executive told TheWrap. “But if a change in venue gives the festival and its programs greater financial freedom and opportunity, then it’s a good thing.” 

The Institute will announce its decision on whether to leave its Utah home behind by the end of March 2025. The organization declined to speak to TheWrap for this article.

The Institute announced an open bidding process in April, allowing each city to pitch itself to become the annual festival’s new host. Sundance whittled down the list in September from six to three finalists based on the cities’ “ethos and equity values,” infrastructure and capabilities to host the festival with an emphasis on diversity in filmmaking. 

Leaving Park City would mark a dramatic shift. Redford famously started Sundance in 1980 when he invited a small group of filmmakers to the mountains of Utah, where he made his home, to have a meeting of the minds.

But Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Jim Cummings believes the spirit of Sundance is not location-dependent. 

“It doesn’t change the integral nature of what we’re all doing there,” Cummings told TheWrap. “We’re there to see weird stuff. We’re there to see discoveries of the next generation of filmmakers, or, like, a new swing from an old filmmaker. I don’t think that the location would change much, apart from the economy of Park City, which I’m sure is still doing fine.”

Trading one ski state for another? 

Zuckerman, who competed in the festival three years in a row as a filmmaker and has since collaborated with the Institute as his state’s film commissioner, told TheWrap that Sundance is ready for a shake-up, and that Boulder understands the culture of the festival. 

In May, the Sundance Institute hosted a directors lab at the Stanley Hotel, an hour outside of Boulder. Zuckerman said the festival’s new initiative held at the hotel featured in “The Shining” gave the organization a taste of Colorado, and he said Sundance plans on continuing the partnership.

In Boulder, Sundance would have access and creativity at its fingertips without having to leave behind the backdrop of the mountain West, Zuckerman said. The filmmaker added that people in Boulder and Colorado “don’t believe in censorship. We won’t tell a festival what they could or should not play.” That’s an issue that has not yet been a problem at Sundance but has been at other film festivals across the globe.

The film commissioner called Boulder the epicenter of documentary film production, referencing award-winning films like “Chasing Ice,” “Chasing Coral,” “Porcelain War” and “The Social Dilemma,” all produced by the local social impact film studio Exposure Labs.

The Colorado Film Incentive program has increased production in the state by providing a tax credit for up to 20% of qualified expenses. Since the program’s inception in 2012, the incentives have generated $182.8 million in actual and predicted production spend through the end of 2022, according to the state’s Film Incentive Task Force.

The lower-cost option: Cincinnati

Rather than bundling up in parkas and snowshoes, the coastal elites may be flocking to the Midwest if the Sundance Institute chooses Cincinnati. 

Allyson West, founder of Cindependent Film Festival in Cincinnati, told TheWrap that if Sundance wants to break the mold and “shrug off this exclusive experience,” Cincinnati is ready for the challenge.

“If Sundance really does want to change what they’re doing, Cincinnati is the city for that,” she said. 

The director-producer said that since she founded Cindependent in 2017, its mission has been to cultivate a love for cinema and filmmaking in the state. 

While Cincinnati may seem like an unlikely choice, the city of 309,000 has served as the backdrop for numerous iconic films including “Rain Man” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Traffic,” along with newer titles like “Carol” starring Cate Blanchett. Within the past four years alone, the city has experienced a relative boom in film production. 

Between 2019 and 2022, the local film industry brought in $258 million to the region, creating 1,873 jobs, according to a January report by the University of Cincinnati Economic Center. Film Cincinnati supported 26 projects in 2023 alone, including “Alto Knights” starring Robert De Niro — the first sale out of the Toronto International Film Festival, which is set to be released by Warner Bros. in March — and 2024’s “Nutcrackers” starring Ben Stiller.

Cincinnati could solve another problem plaguing the Park City festival: the rising cost to attend.

The luxury ski town has become prohibitively expensive for the up-and-coming filmmakers the festival intends to support. The average cost per night for a hotel in Park City is $531, but during peak travel season in the winter, when Sundance takes place, availability can be slim to none.

“If you’re going there trying to sell a film, you probably don’t have the wherewithal to do much aside from get there,” Oscar Garza, the director of the USC arts and culture masters program, said. “And then, if you get there and your film doesn’t sell, then that’s a real hardship financially. It’s a beautiful setting, but that certainly shouldn’t be the driving force.”

If you get [to Sundance] and your film doesn’t sell, then that’s a real hardship financially.

— Oscar Garza, director of USC arts and culture masters program

Even Park City is aware of how expensive it has become for many. During the lucrative ski season, the flood of both film fanatics and snow bunnies has surpassed what the city can handle, with the population of 8,500 swelling to more than 80,000 during the two week-long event.  

“By moving it to a slightly more accessible city, a slightly more central city, it might make the festival even more accessible to critics, journalists, fans of film, who would like to experience it, but have found the logistics of Park City to be challenging,” Kate Hagen, SVP of The Black List, a platform that showcases screenplays to industry professionals and prospective buyers, told TheWrap.

Accessibility problems

The sleek, steep streets of Park City have also proven to be physically inaccessible for disabled attendees. Those who attend the festival know that even able-bodied attendees can easily slip on the icy mountain sidewalks.

The Colorado Film Commissioner made the case that during the early winter months “it’s sunny almost every day” in Boulder, arguing that even when it snows, it melts right away. While snowfall is more sporadic in Cincinnati, temperatures will be brisk in the high 30s and low 40s during Sundance season.   

Cindependent founder West said that Cincinnati has regularly spotlighted the work of disabled filmmakers and creators, noting that the city is prepared to accommodate attendees with a broad range of ability levels.

“One of our largest film programs in the city is based around disability,” she said. “It’s a diversity film festival led by people with disabilities.”

The filmmaker added that Cincinnati’s robust transportation system, including an international airport, a downtown Metro loop and free parking, would ensure that attendees can conveniently see all of the new films without feeling added physical or financial burdens.

Price, price baby

Finding a location with a lower cost structure could also help alleviate some of the financial pressures of Sundance. 

According to publicly available audited financial filings, the festival has lost money in two of the last three years. The Institute lost $6 million in 2021 after total revenue dropped to ​​$34.5 million. Post-pandemic in 2022, Sundance reported $12 million in profit, but in 2023, it reported losses of $6.2 million.

Boulder and Cincinnati both have flourishing college campuses nearby, providing resources to the festival including the opportunity to engage younger audiences. Both cities would be walkable with cheaper accommodations and robust public transportation systems. 

But the big question remains: will a new city be able to maintain the spirit of Sundance?

“There are a couple cities and places on that list that I think we’re all grimacing at,” a publicist who represents filmmakers and regularly attends the festival told TheWrap. “I mean, who wants to go to Cincinnati? … Even if it’s in Salt Lake City, I don’t want to go to Salt Lake City. I don’t want to stay in Salt Lake City.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox is not so sure, either. 

“It would be a huge mistake,” he said of moving the festival during a September news conference. “It would hurt Sundance to leave this state and leave the place where their identity is so much a part of the fabric of our state.” 

Representatives from the hopeful host cities disagree. 

“We’d like to put Colorado and Boulder on the world stage, and Sundance, if we get it, it puts us on the world stage. People will be looking at Colorado and Boulder in a different way than they look at it now,” Zuckerman said.

“If Sundance was to come to Cincinnati, it would validate an artist’s perspective at a very down-to-earth, human level,” Cindependent’s West countered. “It would remove what could be perceived as the pretension of filmmaking in a lot of instances and instead allow people to connect as humans.”

For filmmakers like Sundance’s 2024 Audience Award winner Sean Wang, the festival will always be his dream come true. 

“Sundance is such an industry-facing festival,” Wang told TheWrap. “But from my experiences as a filmmaker there — not just at the festival, but through the labs — it really was such a nourishing and creative environment for my voice to be watered and not just how my voice fit within the industry.”

When his feature-length directorial debut “Didi” got accepted to the festival, Wang said he could not tell anyone without crying. 

“Those experiences were just so formative for me and life-changing in a big way, not just for the movie, but for me as a filmmaker,” he said. 

Wang added that he would like to think wherever Sundance goes next, its heart and core values will follow.

The post Sundance Shakeup: Has Price Pushed the Festival Off the Mountain? appeared first on TheWrap.