Sundance Institute: Last News

Sundance Film Festival announced Thursday that its new home will be Boulder, Colorado, keeping Sundance in the mountains but moving it out of Park City, the Utah ski town that had for decades provided the premier independent film gathering its picturesque snowy backdrop.Organizers said that after 40 years in the mountains, the festival had outgrown Park City, and lacked the necessary theaters or affordable housing to continue hosting what has become one of North America’s most sprawling movie events. Sundance had narrowed down the options to Salt Lake City (with a smaller presence in Park City), Cincinnati and Boulder.Boulder emerged as their choice due to its close proximity to nature, its small-town charm and an engaged community that, organizers said, provides Sundance the ideal setting for its future.“Boulder is a tech town, it’s a college town, it’s an arts town, and it’s a mountain town,” Amanda Kelso, acting chief executive of the Sundance Institute, said in an interview Thursday from Boulder.

And then there were three. After months of in-person visits and formal pitches, the Sundance Institute announced there are now three remaining candidates to host future editions of the famed film festival.

Sophia Scorziello editor It’s official: Sundance Film Festival 2024 is set to take place in-person (and online) on Jan. 18-28, returning to Park City, Utah to commemorate its 40th anniversary of celebrating independent storytelling on the screen. Submissions are open as of May 11, with deadlines for consideration contingent upon project categories. This year, Sundance was held in-person for the first time since 2020, bringing along with it a wide array of programming. The Grand Jury awarded prizes to films “A Thousand and One” in the U.S. Dramatic category, “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” (U.S. Documentary), “The Eternal Memory” (World Cinema Documentary), and “Scrapper” (World Cinema Dramatic).

Organizers of the annual ReFrame Report said Wednesday that 29 of the 100 most popular films of 2022 met the criteria to be awarded a ReFrame Stamp for gender-balanced productions, a list that includes Oscar Best Picture nominees like Sarah Polley’s Women Talking and The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once, as well as Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King and Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Sundance U.S. dramatic competition jury members — including Marlee Matlin– chose to leave after the festival fell short of providing proper captioning for deaf and hearing impaired audience members during the Eccles Theatre premiere of Magazine Dreams last night.

Nia DaCosta (Candyman) has been tapped to direct an adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2019 debut novel The Water Dancer for MGM, Plan B, Harpo Films and Maceo-Lyn.