As Sundance readies to kick off its 2025 version in Park Metropolis, Utah on Thursday, one query will certainly be on everybody’s lips: So, the place are we going to be in two years? Because the competition continues to weigh choices for doable new host cities — together with Cincinnati, Salt Lake Metropolis, and Boulder — beginning in 2027, everyone seems to be curious the place the venerable competition will discover itself in simply 24 months.
And, sure, Sundance brass are well-aware of the curiosity in that new house base. At a press occasion held Wednesday night in Park Metropolis, competition director Eugene Hernandez — who was joined by director of programming Kim Yutani, Sundance Movie Competition CEO Amanda Kelso, and senior programmer John Nein — even joked about it, whereas outlining the present timeline for selecting and asserting a brand new host metropolis.
“I was a journalist,” Hernandez, IndieWire’s personal co-founder, stated throughout ready remarks, “and, in fact, I do know there may be a minimum of one particular, burning query that you simply most likely wish to ask me, or that you simply requested within the different room. And I’m going to let you know the reply to that query, and the reply is, ‘No, not but.’”
After some large laughs from the assembled group, he continued, “Practically a yr in the past, we introduced the launch of an RFP course of to discover a new house for the Sundance Movie Competition. Our work continues, and we nonetheless have two extra years anchored right here in Park Metropolis. Later this winter or early within the spring, as soon as we full our work on this RFP, we’ll announce the brand new house of the Sundance Movie Competition. However earlier than that, we’ll announce the dates for subsequent yr’s competition, so for now, let’s dig in, let’s take pleasure in Sundance 2025 collectively, right here in Park Metropolis, and down the mountain in Salt Lake.”
After asserting a group of six finalists again in July, a range committee throughout the Sundance Institute performed web site visits of all six places and settled on the three finalists in September, “based mostly on ethos, fairness values, infrastructure, and capabilities to host Sundance, in addition to how they hope to foster a group of indie filmmakers sooner or later.”
This yr’s Sundance Movie Competition runs January 23 — February 2.