Sundance waves goodbye to Park City in favour of Boulder

After a yearlong search, the Sundance Film festival will be held Thursday in nearby Boulder, Colorado, keeping Sundance in the mountains but moving it out of Park City, the Utah ski town that had for decades provided the premier independent gathering for filmmakers and movie-lovers.

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Organizers said that over 40 years in the mountains, the festival had outgrown Park City, and lacked the necessary theatres or affordable housing to continue hosting what has become one of North America’s most sprawling movie events. Sundance had narrowed down the options to Salt Lake City (with a smaller presence in Park City), Cincinnati and Boulder.

Boulder emerged as their choice due to its close proximity to nature, its small-town charm and engaged community that “mirrored and provides Sundance the ideal setting for its future.

“Boulder is a tech town, it’s a college town, it’s an arts town, and it’s a mountain town,” Amanda Koster, acting chief executive of the Sundance Institute, said in an interview Thursday from Boulder. “At 100,000 people, a larger town than Park City, it gives us the space to expand.” Koster, Sundance Institute board chair Ebs Burnough and Eugene Hernandez, director of the festival and head of programming, spoke shortly before announcing the festival’s move in Boulder. Local officials, who helped lure Sundance with $34 million in tax credits over 10 years, applauded the decision.