I’ve fond recollections of sitting within the again row of the tiny Vacation Cinema 3 on the Sundance Movie Competition with indie government Bingham Ray, in acquisition mode, testing a brand new film that solely the programmers had ever seen.
Again within the ’90s by way of the aughts, the joy of discovering the following “Within the Bed room,” “intercourse, lies, and videotape,” or Jennifer Lawrence was palpable, when patrons for American narratives have been plentiful and the indie market was on the rise. It wasn’t all about movie star suites and swag giveaways again then. The burgeoning Important Road events have been at all times musts to keep away from, apart from one: It was at all times robust to get into Cinetic’s Monday night time celebration, however you discovered every thing you wanted to know in that upstairs room at Zoom.
These days, and Zoom — and its one-time proprietor and Sundance founder Robert Redford — are gone. However as Sundance preps for its January 2026 Park Metropolis finale, the trade is questioning what the primary Sundance Boulder version in 2027 will appear to be. Many hope the pageant will contract in scale.
My first go to to the thirteenth Middleburg Movie Competition, set at billionaire founder Sheila Johnson’s posh Salamander resort within the rolling hills of Virginia outdoors of Washington, D.C., jogged my memory of the pleasures of a small movie pageant. If simply 45 new options are on view, each attendee will get into the venues. If the press and expertise company are a choose few, there’s extra entry to the parents roaming the halls.
I dropped right into a late-night library circle as Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao (whose “Hamnet” shared the viewers prize with “Rental Household”) confessed she’d prefer to open a funeral dwelling. I ate lunch with Rose Byrne and Mary Bronstein (“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”), Nina Hoss (“Hedda”), and Zoey Deutch (“Nouvelle Imprecise”). I ate dinner with Middleburgh producer-advisors Ron Yerxa and Albert Berger (“Little Miss Sunshine”) and “Prepare Goals” auteur Clint Bentley (“Sing Sing”) and his star Joel Edgerton. And on the annual barbecue, I frolicked with songwriter Diane Warren, who nonetheless hopes to win an actual Oscar after 16 nominations, versus settling for an honorary one. (For the 2023 Oscar present, she practiced her tune “Applause” on a dummy piano, she confessed, which turned out to be reside accompaniment for singer Sofia Carson on the printed. That’s grace beneath hearth!)
Great things, proper? Through the years, I’ve gotten to know trade folks at small festivals across the nation, from California’s Mill Valley, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, and Sonoma to Florida’s Sarasota, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale, Washington’s Orcas Island, Oregon’s Ashland, and New York‘s Hamptons. I bonded with pals and expanded my ever-growing movie group.
The query for any small pageant is find out how to management development and enlargement. Do it’s a must to continue to grow? Middleburg director Susan Koch is weighing these questions now, as demand for attendance grows. She doesn’t need her native viewers to not get into her screenings, as occurs to common passholders at Telluride ($780), who typically wait in line for common titles solely to see most seats taken by precedence passholders ($4900).
Telluride director Julie Huntsinger, who has her twentieth pageant arising, retains this system to about 60 titles. She shouldn’t be in a position to management the rising prices and price-gouging within the rich Colorado mountain city. “It’s a field canyon,” she mentioned on the telephone. “Costs are going to be no matter they’re going to be. However when it comes to rising, we’re small, we’ll hold to the identical quantity of passes.” At Telluride, in impact, the patrons pay for the cheaper passes, which haven’t gone up in worth for 16 years.
The hazard of a pageant getting too giant — Toronto performs greater than 200 options — is that it overwhelms its attendees with an excessive amount of selection. “Individuals need that curation,” mentioned one pageant chief, who criticizes festivals like Toronto for programming too many motion pictures that aren’t “a daring new voice taking an opportunity. I hope Sundance turns into slightly extra concise. Larger shouldn’t be higher.”
One other pageant government added, “Sundance and Toronto are promoting titles within the unbiased acquisitions market. You by no means know what’s the focal point there.”
The Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition has scaled again, truly. Since 2015, the function movies within the official choice steadily declined from 287 to 210 in 2025. “We put ourselves on a eating regimen within the mid-2010s,” mentioned TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey. “Individuals have been simply scrambling, attempting to see every thing, and patrons have been attempting to see all of the gross sales titles. They felt there was an excessive amount of on supply. It was exhausting to inform what they need to concentrate on most. They wished a tighter choice.”
Bailey has additionally made an effort to make the pageant extra walkable, eliminating theaters that required transportation. Now, each screening venue is inside a 10-minute pedestrian distance.
Bailey sees festivals as “residing issues, they usually need to evolve,” he mentioned. “Usually, festivals, as soon as they catch on with the trade and public, will enhance in measurement or not less than in ambition. Sundance has a chance to fully reset.”
On a a lot smaller scale than Toronto, although it’s in an even bigger metropolis, Movie at Lincoln Heart’s New York Movie Competition important choice has stayed about the identical measurement for years: this yr’s slate was 29 movies, with further sidebars tallying a complete 75 options. The pageant books two movies an evening in its important venue, Alice Tully Corridor. “It’s the very best expertise for the viewers,” mentioned Movie at Lincoln Heart president Daniel Battsek.
Because the indie market contracts, what ought to Sundance’s main position be in 2027 and past? “Sundance has a long-held and well-deserved status for nurturing and anointing new expertise; this course of and the pageant play a essential position within the unbiased movie ecosystem,” mentioned Battsek, who factors to a film like Jordan Peele’s Sundance breakout “Get Out” in 2017. “The viewers response created a little bit of a wave that continued proper by way of to all kinds of success.”
As for Sundance, as pageant director Eugene Hernandez typically factors out, the primary half has lengthy been noisier and extra crowded, whereas the vibe modifications because the second half returns to the quieter movie-focused Sundance of yore. Sundance has additionally created a smaller sidebar pageant yearly, first in London, then, in recent times, Mexico Metropolis.
Separated from its ritzy ski resort setting, will Sundance Boulder return the pageant to its indie roots and resist the stress to allow Important Road’s company swag suites and raucous events? Hernandez remains to be targeted on Sundance 2026, and his workforce has but to make many key choices about Sundance 2027, from screening venues and lodges to pageant hubs. They’ve been mounting screenings with the native movie group, which incorporates enthusiastic cinephile school college students.
Sundance Boulder guarantees many modifications from icy Park Metropolis, which had turn into formidable to navigate. It could possibly be tempting for the pageant to increase right into a extra spacious city. Already, Sundance has introduced plans to heart its actions within the walkable downtown space, together with the pedestrian mall Pearl Road, wrote IndieWire’s Kate Erbland, “with entry to eating places, cafes, classic theaters, efficiency arts areas, a multiplex, college services, and different auditoriums.”
As Sundance makes its transition to Boulder, we are able to hope that its management not solely builds a extra sustainable movie pageant however resists the temptation to increase into the Boulder playground.
