Boulder will become the host city for the Sundance Film Festival in January 2027, keeping its Rocky Mountain legacy while moving to a larger city with more room to grow. On Wednesday night, hundreds filled the Boulder Theater to hear directly from the programmers and curators who shape the world’s leading showcase for independent film.
“We’ve been walking the venues, the footprint, the restaurants, and getting to know Boulder and feeling the enthusiasm,” said senior programmer John Nein.
Sundance has run for more than 40 years, most prominently in Park City, Utah. Today, the 11-day festival is staged in person and online, showcasing feature films, documentaries and short films, including international work, and launching careers for directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Jennie Livingston and Wes Anderson.
In 2025, Sundance drew 85,000 in-person attendees and hundreds of thousands of online views. For many, Sundance has long been an opportunity for undiscovered filmmakers to put their work in front of their first audience.
“When you go to Sundance, you fall in love with films that nobody else has seen,” said Kim Yutani, director of programming.
At the Boulder Theater, festival director Eugene Hernandez described the experience as meeting “your new favorite filmmaker, year after year, after year.” A podcast once called Sundance “singular,” he noted. “It was such a great, simple way to describe it,” Hernandez said, “because I think, like the artists that we aim to bring to the festival, there’s a singular quality. Something that really jumps off the screen or that wants to be shared.”
In March, the Sundance Institute announced Boulder as its new festival home under a 10-year contract. The City of Boulder, along with partner groups, committed $34 million in incentives over the next decade — waived fees and logistical support included — to secure the relocation. Officials say the payoff could be significant: In 2024, Sundance generated $132 million for Utah. The question now is whether Boulder can absorb an influx of visitors and industry attention, and what ripple effects the festival might have on the city’s cultural and economic landscape.
That influx may also require more space. Sundance has looked at venues including the Boulder Theater, CU’s Macky Auditorium, eTown Hall and Chautauqua Auditorium. A proposed 2,500-seat performing arts center near Boulder Junction, targeted to open in 2029, could eventually help meet demand.
At the Aug. 27 event, programmers also described how films get selected for a discovery-driven festival. “We go after them,” Nein said, describing a year-round process that tracks trends, scans publications and festivals worldwide, and reaches out to producers and film schools. Each year, Sundance builds a database of roughly 4,000 feature films and 12,000 shorts, ultimately narrowing to 80-100 films each year.
“Getting first crack at a lot of these films, it’s such an incredible privilege,” Yutani said. “There’s something very special about knowing an artist and the whole film team’s lives are going to change after this film plays.” Hernandez added that premieres can be “really significant and moving and overwhelming” for artists telling personal stories.
Beyond screenings, leaders said the festival in Boulder will include panels, music, industry meetings and networking for artists, as well as opportunities for acquisitions. For some attendees, that serendipity is the point. Sundance volunteer theater manager Carlo Maldonado recalled hopping on a bus and being handed a promotional pin for a documentary. He followed the tip and discovered a film tracing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s grassroots political beginnings. “And it was amazing!” Maldonado said. “Once you have that transformative experience, you get it.”
At the Boulder Theater event, Hernandez pulled out his phone for a panorama photo as the crowd cheered and waved. “It fits the idea of Sundance memories,” he said, “because you are the very first audience that Sundance gets to host here at the Boulder Theater.”
Longtime festival-goer Mario Hieb, who attended when it was still the U.S. Film Festival, predicted the move will grow local appetite for independent cinema, as it did along the Wasatch Front in Utah. “That’s going to happen here,” he told Boulder Reporting Lab. “People in Boulder are in for a real treat.”
Aspiring filmmaker Aajalani Patacsil left the Boulder Theater thinking about opportunity. “It got me very excited to try to participate in that world,” she said.
I hope indie film lovers will not overlook the Boulder International Film Festival known to us as BIFF. BIFF is a wonderful collection of films, international, independent, documentary, that you likely will not get a chance to see anywhere else. BIFF is a local creation by sisters Kathy and Robin Beck. BIFF is a twenty-one year event that brings Boulder film lovers together every Spring. Please, I urge all lovers of truly independent films to allow both film festivals to exist with patronage and support.
Walt Stone
Train wreck waiting to happen.
How will 85,000 more people in Boulder affect us? I can easily tell how crowded the city seems when there’s a CU Buffs home game.
I completely agree with Walt Stone’s comments about supporting BIFF. I find it very disappointing how our City’s spokespersons seem to have forgotten all BIFF has brought to Boulder, and how Robin and Kathy Breck built upon that success year after year, always presenting a lineup of excellent, mind opening films while creating a loyal audience for independent and international films, including many outstanding documentaries which may or may not make it to our other two non-corporate film venues (CU’s International Film Series and the wonderful Boedecker Cinema in the Dairy Art Center). All three of those have Boulder residents’ interests in mind. I feel sure it won’t be Boulder residents’ interests that drive Sundance’s decisions. Please don’t let BIFF be thrown under the bus!
Jane Elvins