Robert Redford at Park City, Utah’s 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
Hollywood was changed in many ways by Robert Redford.
Although the actor, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 89, produced some of the most well-known and influential films of the second half of the 20th century, his support of the Sundance Film Festival might have had a longer-lasting impact on Hollywood’s commercial practices.
What began as an attempt to draw film projects to Utah quickly turned a snow-covered area of the state into a hub for American filmmaking, the American equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival, and a significant source of independent films that are seen in theaters across the globe.
In order to draw filmmakers to Utah’s breathtaking mountains and expansive landscapes, the festival was established in the late 1970s. Ten years prior, Redford had purchased property in the state to escape what he saw as the fakery of Los Angeles, and he teamed up with state representatives to start what was then known as the Utah/U.S. Film Festival.
Using his character from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” as the moniker, Redford established the nonprofit Sundance Institute in 1981 to assist independent filmmakers and collaborate with them on their projects. Film reviewer Roger Ebert called the festival’s ten films that year “a cinematic summer camp.”
According to Redford, “we started this with no rigid expectations,” Ebert said. “I don’t know how this will work out. I am aware that unless a film has the potential to earn millions of dollars, it is becoming more and more difficult to get it widely released in our nation. These initiatives here, in my opinion, have a lot of potential.
The festival was renamed Sundance after the institution gained control of it in 1985. Among the 86 films that year were “The Falcon and the Snowman” by John Schlesinger, “The Killing Fields” by Roland Joffe, and “Brother From Another Planet” by John Sayles. “The Killing Fields” would go on to get three Oscars and seven nominations, marking the beginning of the festival’s lengthy history as a launching pad for big-budget motion pictures.
Numerous extremely successful filmmakers, including as Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky, David O. Russell, Ryan Coogler, Robert Rodriguez, Chloé Zhao, and Ava DuVernay, would later have their careers fostered by the school.
Additionally, there are too many noteworthy films that emerged from it to mention, such as Sian Heder’s “CODA,” which took home the 2021 Best Picture Oscar, Kevin Smith’s “Clerks,” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Sex Lies and Videotape.”
In just ten years, the festival has expanded to include 375 films. Major film executives from studios all over the world who were looking for a new hit were among the almost 50,000 attendees and 6,500 submissions that the festival was receiving by 2005 in Park City, Utah. With 85,000 attendees in 2025, the event had surpassed the resort town that had developed to accommodate it out of the mountains. In 2027, the festival announced plans to relocate to Boulder, Colorado.
Redford, who still believed in the festival’s primary goal of promoting intelligent and significant films, had been irritated by the festival’s explosive success and all the commercial hoopla that had sprung up around it.
Redford complained in 2012 that “I want the ambush marketers – the vodka brands and the gift-bag people and the Paris Hiltons – to go away forever,” according to a New York Times article. “They have nothing to do with what’s going on here!”
Filmmakers, however, remained grateful for Redford’s efforts.
Gina Prince-Bythewood, the director of “Love and Basketball,” told the Associated Press in 2023 that “Sundance changed the trajectory of my career.” She explained that after her film was rejected by every Hollywood studio, it was given a reading by Spike Lee’s company, which agreed to produce it, after being workshopped at the institute.
