The Last Dance for Sundance in Park City
In the midst of peak awards season – and, not coincidentally, peak ski season – Hollywood’s aspiring and elite will descend on Park City, Utah, for the annual Sundance Film Festival.
Equal parts ski chalet party and celebration of American indie filmmaking, Sundance was founded by Robert Redford in 1978 and remains the industry’s most important launchpad for independent cinema. From Saw and The Blair Witch Project to Reservoir Dogs and Get Out, some of the most influential films of the past four decades have premiered at Sundance. The festival has also helped launch the careers of many of the medium’s most celebrated directors — from Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh to Chloé Zhao and Ryan Coogler.
The 2026 edition will run from January 22nd to February 1st, and promises to uphold that legacy with a powerful lineup of indie features and documentaries. The year also marks a significant turning point for the festival; this is the first year without its founder and longtime president, Robert Redford, who passed away in September at the age of 89.
In honour of the late actor, director, environmentalist, and champion of independent film, the festival will include a screening of Downhill Racer, Redford’s 1969 ski-racing classic, as well as a panel exploring his environmental storytelling legacy.
This will also be the final year the festival takes place in its longtime home of Park City before relocating to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027. The primary reason for the move is scale — more than 100,000 people descend on the 8,000-person ski town each January, placing enormous strain on accommodations and infrastructure — though Utah’s increasingly anti-LGBTQ politics are also believed to have factored into the decision.
The Lineup
This year’s festival has been unofficially dubbed “The Year of Charli XCX,” with the pop star set to appear in three separate projects: The Moment (a mockumentary she co-produced), I Want Your Sex (an erotic thriller starring Olivia Wilde) and the ensemble satire The Gallerist, starring Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega, Sterling K. Brown and Zach Galifianakis.
Other highly anticipated premieres include The Shitheads, a road-trip comedy starring Dave Franco, Nicholas Braun and Peter Dinklage; undertone, a new horror film from A24; and The Invite, a drama starring Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen about a marriage that begins to unravel over the course of a dinner party.
The documentary slate is equally robust, ranging from The History of Concrete by How To with John Wilson creator John Wilson to Antiheroine, an authorized biography of Courtney Love.
Some of the biggest names in Hollywood are expected to make appearances, and this year should be no exception. Chris Pine, Jon Hamm, Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe are all likely to be on the ground promoting new films, alongside a diverse group of documentary subjects, including basketball star Brittney Griner, novelist Salman Rushdie, tennis legend Billie Jean King and chess champion Judit Polgár.
For all the premieres, celebrity sightings and late-night dealmaking, the 2026 edition of Sundance carries a deeper sense of transition. It is a final curtain call for Park City – the snowbound setting that helped shape the festival’s identity for nearly half a century – and the beginning of a new chapter elsewhere. As Sundance prepares to reinvent itself in Boulder, this year’s gathering feels less like a victory lap than a moment of reflection: a look back at what independent cinema has been, and a look ahead at what it still has the power to become.
Feature Image: Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., and Mason Thames, from the road-trip comedy The Shitheads. (Photo courtesy Sundance Film Festival Press Office.)
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