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“It’s hard not to feel a disturbance in the force,” said Ethan Hawke, whose acting career took off after his early movies appeared at the Utah festival in the 1990s.
Thousands of movie industry insiders and fans make their annual pilgrimage to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival this week.Maggie Shannon for The New York Times
Jan. 28, 2026Updated 9:39 a.m. ET
The actor Ethan Hawke wouldn’t be Ethan Hawke without the Sundance Film Festival. The director Cathy Yan might have given up her filmmaking dreams without it. And the producer Matthew Greenfield may not have become president of Searchlight Pictures if Sundance had not accepted his first film, “Star Maps,” into the festival in 1997.
As the thousands of movie industry insiders and fans make their annual pilgrimage to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival this week, their memories about the event’s past are threatening to overwhelm the films.
That is because this is the last year that the event will be held in Park City, its home for 40-plus years. (Its future home is Boulder, Colo.) And because this is the first festival since the death of its founder, Robert Redford.
“As a generation that grew up on ‘Star Wars,’ it’s hard not to feel a disturbance in the force,” said Mr. Hawke, who first came to Sundance in 1994 as an actor in “Reality Bites.” He returned the next year with “Before Sunrise” — a movie chosen by Mr. Redford for the opening night.
Or as Mr. Greenfield put it: “I feel sad in a nostalgic way, but I also feel hopeful that it’s an opportunity for the next phase.”
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“What I will miss most is my youth,” the actor Ethan Hawke said about the Sundance Film Festival’s leaving Park City. “The streets are full of memories.”
