With the Sundance Film Festival and filmmaker labs, Robert Redford brought change to cinema

Robert Redford poses on a balcony along Main Street decorated with his Sundance Film Festival banners
on Jan. 17, 2003, in Park City, Utah

Robert Redford was disillusioned with the Hollywood mainstream. The Sundance Kid, who died this week 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 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.”

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. LINDSEY BAHR MDT/AP Film Writer, MDT/AP