The Sundance Movie Festival is venturing to a new town.After a year

of deliberations, copious site gos to and ratings of plane rides, the board of the Sundance Institute has selected Stone, Colo., to host its film festival beginning January 2027.

“Stone is a tech town, a college town, it's a truly innovative town,” Eugene Hernandez, the festival's director, said. “It's simply a truly creative location. And that combination of the artsy neighborhood with the university side of all of it is actually vibrant.”

It's also 10 times the size of Park City, Utah, where the festival has actually been held because the star and director Robert Redford began it in 1981. As the festival kept growing, Park City began bursting at the seams.Ebs Burnough, chair of the Sundance Institute, said the relocate to a town at the base of the mountains would help Sundance maintain its connection to the natural world. “It's easy to get drawn into that remarkable thing that Robert Redford actually thought in, which was that commune in between the artist and nature, and to actually be able to get away from the verticalness of cities.”

To regular Sundance goers, the move to Stone is likely to be less disconcerting than shifting the place to Cincinnati, one of 2 other finalist cities. Salt Lake City was also in the running, and the loss of the festival will be considerable to the state of Utah. The festival produced $132 million in earnings for the state in 2024, according to a report launched by the festival.Sundance revealed

last April that it was checking out the possibility of a new home. Park City just didn't have sufficient theater, and lodging prices had actually become expensive. An excellent part of the locals were all set for it to go, too. While Sundance included 1,730 jobs, according to the celebration, it likewise kept skiers away during a prime month of winter snow.”Words can not express the sincere appreciation I

have for Park City, the state of Utah and all those in the Utah neighborhood that have assisted to construct the organization,”Mr. Redford said in a statement.Boulder, about 30 miles outside Denver, has around

100,000 citizens, compared with Park City's 8,200. The festival means to center its activities in the city's downtown and its nearby theaters and places and the Pearl Street Mall, a pedestrian street with restaurants and cafes. The celebration will likewise collaborate with the University of Colorado Boulder.Initially, over 100 U.S. locations offered to host the festival. Sundance winnowed them down to

the 67 that could satisfy a range of requirements, consisting of adequate screening and lodging places and proximity to a substantial worldwide airport. The Sundance selection committee then welcomed 13 of those cities to send a proposal. 6 of them– Atlanta; Boulder; Cincinnati; Louisville, Ky.; Salt Lake City; and Santa Fe, N.M.– were later picked for website visits.Sundance will not be the only substantial film celebration held in Colorado. The Telluride Film Celebration has actually been operating over Labor Day weekend in Telluride, a mountain town in the southwest part of the state, for over 50 years. Source