With the Sundance Film Festival and filmmaker labs, Robert Redford
brought change to cinema
[September 18, 2025]
By LINDSEY BAHR
Robert Redford was disillusioned with the Hollywood mainstream. The
Sundance Kid, who died Tuesday at age 89, knew that there were more
stories out there, ones that weren’t getting made into films because of
the rigidity of the business. So he made something different, founding
Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival as an alternative
avenue for emerging filmmakers, where independence was a virtue, not a
liability.
Over the past four decades, the institute and the festival have given an
early platform to countless young filmmakers, including Steven
Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Ryan Coogler, Chloé
Zhao, Nicole Holofcener, Nia DaCosta, Taika Waititi, Ava DuVernay, Rian
Johnson, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and
many more.
“For me, the word to be underscored is ‘independence.’ I’ve always
believed in that word. That’s what led to me eventually wanting to
create a category that supported independent artists who weren’t given a
chance to be heard,” Redford told The Associated Press in 2018. “The
industry was pretty well controlled by the mainstream, which I was a
part of. But I saw other stories out there that weren’t having a chance
to be told and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can commit my energies to
giving those people a chance.’ As I look back on it, I feel very good
about that.”
In 2019, Redford said he intended to step back from his public facing
role at the festival, though he remained the organization's president
and founder until his death.
“I think we’re at a point where I can move on to a different place,
because the thing I’ve missed over the years is being able to spend time
with the films and with the filmmakers and to see their work and be part
of their community,” he said at the 2019 kickoff. “I don’t think the
festival needs a whole lot of introduction now: It runs on its own
course, and I’m happy for that.”
Inspiration in Utah
Redford’s love affair with Utah began much earlier, on a cross-country
motorcycle road trip in 1961 when he bought 2 acres of land. By 1969,
with more money in his pocket from his film successes, he’d purchased
5,000 acres, some of which was a mountain resort but most of the land
was for wilderness preserves. He named it Sundance, after his character
in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
In 1981, the year he won best picture and director for “Ordinary
People,” he established the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit organization
and held the first filmmakers lab at the Sundance Mountain Resort, about
13 miles northeast of Provo. A few years later, in 1985, the institute
took over what was then known as the U.S. Film Festival, which would
later be renamed the Sundance Film Festival. The festival in the mid-80s
hosted the Coen brothers “Blood Simple” and Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger
Than Paradise.”
‘sex, lies and videotape’ and the birth of an indie boom
The festival was really put on the map when Soderbergh premiered “sex,
lies and videotape” in Park City in 1989. A true indie, the film went on
to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes and get an Oscar nomination, but it was
its box office success that ignited a veritable indie film boom. And
Sundance was where all the discoveries were happening. In 1991, the
festival premiered “Daughters of the Dust,” “Paris is Burning” and
“Slacker,” in 1992, Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs,” in 1993, Wes Anderson
brought “Bottle Rocket,” and in 1994 “Hoop Dreams” and “Clerks.”
“If it weren’t for Robert Redford, independent art houses might not have
succeeded,” said Gary Meyer, cofounder of Landmark Theatre, and a former
festival director at Telluride who also worked with Redford. “Having the
‘Sundance Kid’ give his stamp of approval to independent features and
documentaries brought audiences to our theaters, while helping launch
the careers of dozens of filmmakers … He made it ‘cool’ to see
adventurous movies when they came to commercial neighborhood theaters.”
A commitment to Indigenous artists
In 1994, the Sundance Institute also made a commitment to Indigenous
filmmakers by launching a festival program to showcase Native and
Indigenous films that continues to this day.
Film and TV producer Bird Runningwater, who is Cheyenne and Mescalero
Apache, spent 20 years at the Sundance Institute helping Redford build a
platform for Indigenous artists.
While hard to sum up the importance of what has been accomplished over
the decades, Runningwater called it life-changing for not only artists
but for tribal communities as well, to see themselves reflected on the
screen in an authentic way.
“I’m so pleased to have been a part of that for Sundance, and it’s all
thanks to Redford’s vision,” he said. “You know, he just had this notion
that things could be different if we talk our own stories, and I do
believe we’re in that era of changing things.”
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Robert Redford poses on a balcony along Main Street decorated with
his Sundance Film Festival banners on Jan. 17, 2003, in Park City,
Utah. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac, File)
 The behind-the-scenes power of
the labs
The festival might get the most headlines, but it’s the year-round
work of the Institute that has really left a mark on independent
cinema. The screenwriting and directing labs have been just as, if
not more, influential in helping to launch the first films of many
of Hollywood’s top filmmakers over the past 40 years, under the
leadership of Michelle Satter, who has helped shepherd projects from
“Hard Eight” to “Fruitvale Station” and “Love & Basketball.”
“Sundance changed the trajectory of my career,” filmmaker and labs
adviser Gina Prince-Bythewood told the AP in 2023. “How many of
these special projects would have never seen the light of day
without Michelle, without Robert Redford’s vision, without this
incredible place? It’s actually really scary to think about.”
Native filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (“Rez Ball”) said that his career as
a young man was defined by Redford’s support for independent cinema
and supporting Native storytelling.
“I went to the Sundance Filmmakers lab at 23 years old,” Harjo wrote
on Instagram on Tuesday. “The support from Sundance made me feel
like I belonged in an industry that most times felt so unreachable.
He personally taught me things about story, shooting, and editing
that I take with me today.”
Oscar winners and enduring classics
The list of notable films that have played at Sundance grows every
year. Some enduring favorites include: “Get Out,” “Whiplash,”
“Little Miss Sunshine,” “Memento,” “Before Sunrise,” “Boyhood,” “Y
tu mamá también,” “Brick,” “The Squid and the Whale,” “Manchester by
the Sea,” “Call Me By Your Name” and “A Real Pain.”
The festival got its first best picture winner with “CODA,” which
played at the festival in 2021. Questlove’s “Summer of Soul,” which
also debuted in 2021, won the academy’s documentary award that year
as well.
Many best documentary winners start at Sundance, including “When We
Were Kings,” “Born Into Brothels,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Man on
Wire,” “The Cove,” “Searching for Sugarman,” “20 Feet from Stardom,”
“Icarus,” “American Factory,” “ Navalny,” and “20 Days in Mariupol.”
The most recent winner, “No Other Land” was supported by the labs.
The future of Sundance
Redford had worried for years that the festival had outgrown Park
City, Utah. In 1996, an estimated 15,504 attended the festival. In
2015, the number had ballooned to 46,100. It peaked in 2018 with
124,900 festivalgoers. The festival estimated that the 2025 edition
had 85,472 in-person attendees, a 17% increase from 2024.
Earlier this year, the decision was made to relocate to Boulder,
Colorado, starting in 2027. That means there will be one last
festival in Park City in January.
“Bob’s vision launched a movement that, over four decades later, has
inspired generations of artists and redefined cinema in the U.S. and
around the world,” Sundance leaders said in a statement Tuesday.
“The vibrant storytelling landscape we cherish today, both as
artists and audiences, is unimaginable without his passionate drive
and principled leadership.”
There were already plans in the works to celebrate the vision of
Redford. In the wake of his death, that tribute will be even more
deeply felt.
Former Sundance director John Cooper, a close friend of Redford’s
who led the festival from 2009 to 2020, told The Associated Press in
an interview earlier this year that he felt like his role was “to be
a keeper of the flame for Robert Redford and his legacy.” Now,
Cooper, the artistic director of Sonoma's True West Film Center who
is still a regular presence at Sundance said, that mission is more
important than ever. It’s “a lot to process, going from a legacy
that was alive in him to one we have to carry on,” Cooper told the
AP. That legacy, he said, centers on spreading the power of
storytelling.
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Associated Press writer Hannah Schoenbaum contributed from Utah,
Susan Montoya Bryan contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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