My earliest Sundance reminiscence isn’t a celebration or a deal — it’s a movie. I used to be in my 20s once I first traveled to Park Metropolis with pals, not but realizing how a lot that journey would form my life. We occurred upon a screening of Intercourse, Lies, and Videotape, and I used to be riveted. That movie, now acknowledged as a watershed second, helped revolutionize the unbiased movie enterprise. Watching one thing so uncooked and quietly radical unfold on display screen was jaw-dropping for a younger girl starting her profession within the trade and witnessing one thing so private and revelatory marked the start of what would develop into each a lifelong profession and an annual pilgrimage to the Sundance Movie Competition.
I used to be residing in New York on the time, and I bear in mind the sensation of being dropped into this little snow globe of a city that felt like the middle of the universe. There have been fewer distractions in these early days — no fixed buzzing in your pocket. I flew into Salt Lake Metropolis, made my solution to Park Metropolis, camped out with pals and hopped on the shuttle to get from one theater to the subsequent. When you have been fortunate, somebody had a automobile, and also you’d pile in collectively. However fact be instructed, I cherished the shuttle, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers and speaking about movies prefer it was the one factor on this planet that mattered. As a result of for every week, it type of was.
Fairly rapidly, Sundance grew to become a big a part of my life — not simply professionally, however personally. I attended the competition whereas seven months pregnant with a movie I produced, Twin Falls Idaho. That 12 months marked a turning level: I left the worldwide gross sales world to develop into an unbiased movie agent on the former William Morris Company alongside Cassian Elwes, the place we constructed a world packaging and finance division — an method many businesses quickly adopted and one I introduced to assist construct UTA’s Impartial Movie Group a decade later.
Not lengthy after, my Sundance grew to become even greater. As soon as my daughter was born, she got here with me to Sundance yearly for the primary decade of her life, together with my mother and father. Park Metropolis grew to become our yearly household ritual. My mother and father, New Yorkers and devoted moviegoers, fell into its rhythm, whereas my daughter, Bella, had her personal model of Sundance, like her first time snowboarding at Deer Valley at 4 years outdated, and days spent with producer Julie Yorn’s daughter, prefer it was winter camp. It was work, but it surely was additionally this small, particular world for the individuals I cherished most — just like the 12 months my father ran into the late movie critic, Roger Ebert, and proudly instructed him his daughter had produced Twin Falls Idaho, as if he have been within the know, though it premiered the 12 months earlier than!
We stayed in the identical place 12 months after 12 months — the City Carry Condos on the base of Principal Avenue. It was sensible, as you would stroll to and from Principal Avenue, and it later grew to become our dwelling base for the UTA Indie Movie Group. We’d take over a flooring and have conferences all day. Individuals coming out and in. Brokers camped out. Filmmakers dropping by. It was our little hive.
That’s one of many issues that made Sundance so particular, all of the behind-the-scenes frenzy that solely occurs when trapped collectively in a tiny mountain city. Many people bear in mind the late-night bids and negotiations that stretched into the subsequent morning. No e mail chains, however in-person negotiations. It was equal components technique session and endurance sport. And years later, when cell telephones grew to become a given, offers occurred in probably the most Sundance means doable — on the prime of a ski resort the place, sarcastically, the reception was greatest.
After which there are the tales that sound made up till you bear in mind, “No, it actually was like that.” Like hiding from distributors to keep away from being pressured to shut or a bidding that turned so contentious it will definitely spiraled right into a bodily confrontation in entrance of a restaurant on Principal Avenue.
Sundance again then was high-stakes, high-emotion and fueled by a type of cabin-fever power. Put a bunch of bold individuals in a small city, working on no sleep and a ticking clock and issues sometimes acquired dramatic.
It sounds insane, and it was, however that depth was oddly a part of the magic. Sundance has all the time had a means of compressing time. One screening can flip every thing in a single day. There may be nothing like a screening full of reverberating laughter, if you smile to your self pondering, “They get this movie.”
In my 30-plus years of going to Sundance, I’ve seen careers break in methods which can be simple, and I used to be lucky to be concerned with some really memorable movies alongside the way in which. Early discoveries like David Slade’s Arduous Sweet (2005) and critically acclaimed movies like The Woodsman (2004), Half Nelson (2006), Frozen River (2007), Blue Valentine (2010) and Margin Name (2011) together with Lee Toland Krieger’s debut Celeste and Jesse Perpetually (2012), written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, and Michael Showalter’s The Large Sick (2017), written by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon. Different highlights have been Palm Springs (2020), which we bought for a record-breaking quantity, and Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Woman (2015), the place we witnessed a filmmaker’s voice touchdown totally shaped and the unmistakable sense that you just’re watching the beginning of an actual profession.
Documentaries have additionally been central to my Sundance expertise. Movies like Hoop Desires, Murderball and March of the Penguins sparked a long-lasting ardour for the shape, which led me to work on movies like The Cove (2009) and Bryan Fogel’s Icarus (2017), each of which went on to win the Academy Award. After which Jeff Orlowski’s The Social Dilemma (2020), Maite Alberdi’s Oscar-nominated The Everlasting Reminiscence (2023) and Josh Greenbaum’s Will & Harper (2024), every a reminder that documentaries can transfer the world in actual time and being a part of that impression is deeply private.
Rena Ronson, Rashida Jones, Will McCormack, Keya Khayatian, James Adams, Erik Hyman and Sarah-Clossey on the Celeste and Jesse Perpetually celebration dinner.
Rena Ronson
What distinguishes Sundance from different festivals is that it’s all the time been a real discovery engine. That’s Robert Redford’s legacy. The competition, as we all know it, was designed to nurture rising voices, and Park Metropolis, with its small-town intimacy, made that mission really feel tangible.
The competition, just like the enterprise itself, has been in fixed flux. And as Sundance expanded, Park Metropolis inevitably started to outgrow its small-town footprint.
Which brings us to Boulder.
Many individuals have requested me what I take into consideration Sundance in Boulder. To me, it is going to be extra of a Sundance 2.0, not Sundance “transferring”. It’s a brand new chapter, and it’s time to embrace the change because the world evolves. Park Metropolis will all the time be the Egyptian, Eccles, Principal Avenue, The Consuming Institution, Grappa, the Library and even the Vacation and Yarrow. That mythology belongs to that city. However the spirit of Sundance is one thing all of us hope and imagine will be moveable. Ideally, Boulder holds it in a brand new means, reaching a brand new and vibrant youthful viewers on the identical time.
If Sundance will get this subsequent chapter proper, 5 years from now we’ll nonetheless be speaking about what has all the time mattered: discovery, new voices, movies that break via and careers that get launched. That’s the hope and the problem.
Boulder gained’t change Park Metropolis, however it could possibly create its personal type of magic. The competition’s coronary heart can thrive wherever it’s nurtured. If we feature that function ahead, Sundance gained’t simply be a brand new location — it is going to be a continuation of a narrative that has all the time been about seeing movies, discovering voices and witnessing careers take root in actual time.
My mother and father are not right here. My daughter is grown. However Park Metropolis holds a lot of them for me, from the pictures, the rituals, the recollections, the bear statue on Principal Avenue and the apartment that grew to become our dwelling away from dwelling. Sundance hasn’t simply been a competition the place I labored; it’s a spot my household has lived alongside me.
As this transition occurs, that is what I hope by no means adjustments: The sensation that, for a minimum of one week initially of the 12 months, the films come first, discovery continues to be alive and the way forward for unbiased movie can nonetheless start in a theater because the lights go down.
Rena Ronson is associate and head of UTA Impartial Movie Group and a 30-year Sundance Movie Competition veteran.
Ronson’s mom, Joyce, and father, Irwin, with Ronson’s daughter, Bella, on the beloved Park Metropolis bear statue.
Rena Ronson