Sundance kicks off its last year in Utah with powerful premieres and tributes to Robert Redford

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Robert Redford liked to say that everybody has a story. He’s not the only person who said it, but he is one of the few who did something to celebrate it, his daughter, Amy Redford, said Wednesday evening ahead of the Sundance Film Festival’s opening day.

Thanks to her father’s vision, the Sundance Institute he founded and its year-round programs have helped shape and nurture American independent film for the past 40 years. This year’s Sundance Film Festival is a grand goodbye party: It’s the first without Redford following his death in September, and the last in Utah before the festival relocates to Boulder, Colorado.

“This is a festival of new beginnings and endings,” his daughter said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m going to look around and drink it up and enjoy it and just not take anything for granted.”

Robert Redford’s legacy and Sundance’s decades-long history in Utah are key themes of the 2026 festival, which began Thursday morning with over a dozen films premiering throughout the day.

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