Deep in the snow-capped mountains of Utah, hundreds of film lovers and Hollywood fixtures kicked off the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at a gala on Friday night, paying tribute to Robert Redford, the festival’s founder, who died in September.
The night also marked Sundance’s last year in Park City, its home for more than four decades. Next year, the festival will relocate to Boulder, Colo., and the opening gala established a tone of reflection, focusing on the community that Mr. Redford worked to create.
In many ways, the influential annual gathering centering on independent film has outgrown Park City, and the night felt like a reunion and farewell to a location where attendees have forged deep friendships and major careers.
On Friday, actors and filmmakers including Woody Harrelson, Ava DuVernay, Tessa Thompson and Ethan Hawke filed into the ballroom of Grand Hyatt Deer Valley. Outfitted in fleece, fur coats, cowboy hats and sensible shoes, attendees channeled the night’s dress code of “upscale mountain chic.” Mr. Hawke wore a suit inspired by “The Electric Horseman,” Mr. Redford’s character from the 1979 film about a former rodeo champion.
This year at the festival, Mr. Hawke stars, alongside Russell Crowe, in “The Weight,” a Depression-era crime drama. He is also up for an Oscar for his role in “Blue Moon.”
In an interview on the red carpet outside the gala, Mr. Hawke said he first attended the festival in 1991 before returning in 1994 with “Reality Bites,” the romantic dramedy co-starring Ben Stiller and Winona Ryder. He came back again the following year with “Before Sunrise,” the first installment of Richard Linklater’s film trilogy co-starring Julie Delpy.
Mr. Hawke, noting that he has attended Sundance many times since, underlined the impact the Sundance Institute, the nonprofit Mr. Redford founded in 1981, which hosts the festival, has had on generations on filmmakers.
“That’s the kind of America we’re all kind of hunting for right now,” Mr. Hawke said, adding, “where we’re looking after each other, pulling each other forward in a sense of community.”
Many of the films out of Sundance have shaped the landscape of independent cinema and achieved critical acclaim, including “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986), “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006), “Whiplash” (2014), “Get Out” (2017) and “CODA” (2021). The festival has also been key to the careers of renowned filmmakers, like Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.
But Amy Redford, Mr. Redford’s daughter, recalled early memories of “begging people” to watch movies at the Egyptian Theater on Main Street in Park City.
“When my dad could have created an empire, he created a nest,” Ms. Redford said, adding, “and the Sundance Institute was designed to support and protect and nourish and then to set free.”
The gala on Friday night was filled with some of the award-winning filmmakers who were supported by the institute early in their careers, including a few currently competing against one another in this year’s Oscar competition: Ryan Coogler, whose film “Sinners” broke a record for the most nominations, receiving 16; and Chloé Zhao, who received eight Oscar nominations for her film “Hamnet.”
“Trailblazing, or leadership, is not about dominance,” said Ms. Zhao, who was given the annual Trailblazer Award. “It’s about interdependence and it’s about community.”
Ms. Zhao participated in the Sundance Institute Labs in 2012 and premiered her first film, “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” at the festival in 2015. She later won Oscars for best picture and best director for “Nomadland,” her drama about the American West starring Frances McDormand.
The gala also honored the actor and filmmaker Ed Harris and the Hungarian filmmaker Gyula Gazdag, who received the inaugural Robert Redford Luminary Award for dedication to bold storytelling and the Sundance Institute.
“At a time when lies have become commonplace and diversity is condemned,” Mr. Harris said in his acceptance speech, continuing, “the Labs’ support for independent storytelling remains an oasis of artistic freedom, virtue, tolerance, imagination, openness and love.”
The filmmakers Nia DaCosta (“Hedda”) and Geeta Gandbhir (“The Perfect Neighbor”) also received the Vanguard Awards, which honor emerging artists in fiction and nonfiction.
The days ahead will feature archival screenings, restorations and special events honoring Sundance’s many decades in Park City, which, at Friday’s gala, included a surprise performance of “Forever Young” by the Broadway star Patti LuPone.
“There’s something about this place to make people, I think, very porous and open,” Ms. Thompson said. “And I really appreciate getting to see, and coexist, not just with my cohorts inside of the industry, but viewers, volunteers. I just like that spirit. It’s so rare, and it really only exists here.”
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