Park City, Utah – With 2025 Sunday Film Festival On the way, the leaders, local and assistants of a lifetime are making a final impulse, which could include paying millions of dollars, to maintain the world -renowned film festival as their directors consider. uprooting.
Thousands of festival attendees placed bright yellow stickers to their winter coats that read “Keep Sunday in Utah” in a last effort to convince the festival leadership and state officials to keep it in Park City, their 41 -year -old home.
Governor Spencer Cox said previously that Utah would not throw so much money at the festival and other states that hope to attract him. Now his office urges the legislature to divide $ 3 million for Sunday in the state budget, weeks before the independent film festival is expected to choose a house during the next decade.
He could retain a small presence in the picturesque park and the center in the nearby Salt Lake City, or move to another finalist: Cincinnati, Ohio or Boulder, Colorado, from 2027.
“Sunday is Utah, and Utah is Sunday. You really can’t separate those two, “said Cox.” This is your home, and we desperately expect your home forever. “
The director of the festival, Eugene Hernández, told reporters last week that they had not made a final decision. An announcement is expected this year at the beginning of spring.
Colorado is trying to even more sweeten your offer. The State is considering that the legislation grants up to $ 34 million in fiscal incentives to film festivals such as Sunday until 2036, at the top of the $ 1.5 million in funds already approved to attract the UTAH festival to its neighboring state.
Cincinnati approved a resolution assigning $ 2.5 million to Sundance if the festival leaders move to the southwest of Ohio. However, money may not be the final draw.
Sunday leaders say that the festival has overcome the city of skiing that helped put on the map decades ago, and are concerned that he has developed an air of exclusivity that takes away the focus on films. An ideal home would make Sunday more centralized, affordable and accessible to all who appreciate the independent film.
Some festival attendees and industry leaders care about Sundance would lose their identity outside their idyllic hometown mountain city.
Roger and Carin Ehrenberg, important donors of the festival, said they would stop attending regularly if the festival was out of Utah. Sunday is a “magical experience” for the philanthropists of New York City, they said, due in large part to the atmosphere in Park City.
“If you go to Cincinnati, maybe once on a blue moon we would go, but it wouldn’t be normal,” said Carin Ehrenberg. “For us, he will lose his appeal.”
The couple said they would probably continue to donate even if they did not attend.
Nineteen years of good memories in Sundance helped inspire Dr. Rhonda Taubin to relocate her family from Atlanta to Heber City, the neighboring city of Park City. He has no links with the film industry, but has become a fervent defender of maintaining the festival in his new native state.
This year, she and her friends distributed thousands of “Keep Sunday in Utah” stickers, and another that said “Nohio for Sunday”, to show the festival how much it means to the local community.
“I am not really a cinema fan, but my other girlfriends are, and be able to share everything we have passed as women, like mothers, like wives, like daughters, I don’t want it to end,” said said. “We see provocative films that make us talk and think about things that perhaps we had never thought before. Utah would be in a great loss without those conversations. “
If Sundance stays in Utah, the former festival director, John Cooper, said that important adjustments are needed to improve transport between Salt Lake City and Park City and make accommodation for filmmakers more affordable.
Cooper, who directed the Festival from 2009 to 2020, said he would be sad to see Sunday away from the original vision of the actor and filmmaker Robert Redford. His own name comes from the character of Redford in the 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sunday Kid”.
“I felt that my role was to be a flame guardian for Robert Redford and his legacy,” Cooper told The Associated Press. “The mountains of Utah, this was their vision. It is strange to say ‘Sunday in Ohio’. But I think I could go anywhere.
On the red carpet this week, many divided into whether Sunday should stay or leave.
Actor Elijah Wood urged the festival to remain in Park City, saying that the location is part of his DNA.
Others were open to be relocated. Actor Tessa Thompson, who serves at the Trustee Board of the Sunday Institute, said the festival could maintain its identity in a new city.
“I think Sondance has more to do with the spirit and community, and I think that is perennial leaf,” said Thompson. “Regardless of where Sunday is, Sunday will always be.”
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