“It’s unfortunate that this is the last Sundance in Park City, but we’re going to see what Colorado is like,” Judd Apatow said Thursday at the opening night premiere of the documentary “Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story.”
The director spoke out loud about the anxious feelings many festival goers felt as they climbed the mountain for the last time before Sundance departs for Boulder in 2027. The festival has been under financial pressure since the coronavirus forced organizers to cancel two in-person screenings, praising the independent film industry as it struggles to attract audiences. Colorado offers tax breaks and financial incentives, but it’s difficult for filmmakers to leave the place they’ve called home for more than 40 years.
Still, Sundance rolled out red carpets for directors like Apatow and stars like Chris Pine, Jenny Slate and Riz Ahmed. It was the first day of Pine and Slate’s packed show at Eccles, the festival’s biggest venue, for the afternoon premiere of Carousel, a lyrical drama about a divorced doctor who returns to his hometown to reunite with his high school girlfriend. Ahmed stars in Amazon’s new series “Bait,” in which he plays an actor who auditions for the role of James Bond and rises to stardom, while observational humorist John Wilson appeared at Sundance to premiere his new documentary “The History of Concrete.”
Despite the challenges roiling the industry, Pine remains optimistic about the future of arthouse films, insisting that he feels strongly that independent films are “still alive and vibrant.”
“People want to go see a movie. It doesn’t really matter if it looks like 20 years ago or 30 years ago,” he told Variety on the red carpet before the premiere of “Carousel.” “There may be some decline in movies being central to the zeitgeist, but hey, people still want to see movies.”
One of the most well-received opening night films, the comedy-drama “Shake Your Ass!” arrived at the festival relatively under the radar. But the story of a widow (Rinko Kikuchi) whose love of dance helps her break out of deep depression struck a chord with the crowd at Eccles at night, who rose to their feet as the end credits played. The film’s director and co-writer, Joseph Kubota Władyka, said “Ha-chan” was intended as a tribute to his 80-year-old mother, who received applause from the audience.
“My mother has gone through a lot of hardships in her life,” Uwadika said. “She had to raise three boys on her own, and dance was the thing she always relied on to get through those difficult times. So we wanted to make this film that paid homage to her and showed that no matter how hard life gets, you have to keep moving forward and you have to keep dancing.”
The first day of the festival was unseasonably warm. Instead of dazzling white mountains and huge snowdrifts, only snow remained. Main Street was also quiet, lined with expensive boutiques stocking Farewell gear. Among the many installations, the upscale club The Marquis promoted a series of DJ sets dubbed “The Last Dance,” with A-listers such as Anderson .Paak (as his alter ego DJ Pee Wee) and Diplo celebrating the host city’s final days. Egypt, the iconic hub for Downtown Premiere, is not showing any new films associated with the festival. Instead, posters in stores advertised that a musical tribute to “Little Miss Sunshine,” one of Sundance’s biggest hits, would be played during the festival.
Days before Sundance opened, festival director Eugene Hernandez acknowledged that the event was bittersweet, as it was Utah’s last hurray and came so soon after founder Robert Redford passed away at age 89 in September.
“Mr. Redford’s passing made everything even more painful,” Hernandez said.
It also prompted Hernandez, who has been coming to Sundance since the early ’90s as a journalist for IndieWire and later as a festival programmer, to think about the gathering’s impact on independent film. The film helped launch the careers of everyone from Quentin Tarantino, who premiered Reservoir Dogs in Park City in 1992, to Ryan Coogler, who premiered Fruitvale Station to rave reviews in 2013. Other alumni include Steven Soderbergh, Kenneth Lonergan, Ava DuVernay, Damien Chazelle, and Richard Linklater. Many also attended the Sundance Institute, where they were mentored by other more established filmmakers.
“Mr. Redford created a space where established and emerging artists could come together to workshop and rehearse their stories, rewrite and develop their scripts, and he created a festival where their work could be shown,” Hernandez said. “That legacy is deeply embedded in my own personal understanding of what independent film is.”
There was an air of elegance to the traditional celebration, as “The Last Sundance” was mentioned in countless conversations, and some were quick to add “…in Park City” to avoid sounding too bleak about Boulder’s future. At the Ray Theater, a gloomy Apatow reflected on his farewell to Utah.
“It’s heartbreaking. I have so many great memories here,” Apatow told Variety. “Unfortunately, life changes and you have to accept that.”
Antonio Ferme and William Earl contributed to this report.
