What to know about Boulder, Colorado, the Sundance Film Festival's new home

The Sundance Film Festival is Boulder bound, leaving its home of four decades in Park City, Utah, for a new chapter in neighboring Colorado.

Organizers announced their decision Thursday after a yearlong search in which numerous U.S. cities vied to host the nation’s premier independent film festival. The other finalists were Cincinnati, Ohio, and a combined Salt Lake City and Park City bid.

Festival leaders said politics did not influence their move from conservative Utah to liberal Colorado. They did however make “ethos and equity values” one of their criteria and referred to Boulder in their announcement as a “welcoming environment.”

Boulder stood out to organizers as an artsy, walkable and medium-sized city close to nature. It has one of the highest concentrations of professional artists in the U.S. and is home to the University of Colorado, where the film program contributes to a vibrant art scene, Sundance leaders said. They noted the large student population and campus venues will create new opportunities to engage young people in the event.

Nearby nature in the Rocky Mountain foothills offers room for visitors and artists to stretch their legs and draw inspiration from high country scenery. It's also just over half an hour from downtown Denver and not much farther to the city’s international airport. There is not currently a light rail system connecting Denver to Boulder, but a bus runs between the two cities.

When Sundance leaders began their search for a new home, they said the festival had outgrown the charming ski town of Park City and developed an air of exclusivity that took focus away from the films. Boulder, a city of 100,000 people, has space for a more centralized festival. But it's not all that more affordable for attendees. The cost of living is estimated to be 31% higher than the national average, versus Park City’s 33%, according to the Economic Research Institute. Visitors also say it can be difficult to find available hotel rooms and short term rentals when the university hosts large events or home football games.

Actor Jonah Hill, “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and — perhaps most significantly — Sundance founder Robert Redford all attended the University of Colorado in Boulder. The school has a heady party culture that sometimes spills into the surrounding streets. The city is also home to a private Buddhist college.

Redford, 88, gave the festival's relocation his blessing.

Redford is remembered in Boulder with a mural inside The Sink, a restaurant and bar where he worked as a janitor back in his college days.

“It’s gonna be really fun to see what happens and when people are introduced to the beauty of Boulder and how amazing this place is. It’s just gonna elevate Boulder’s presence on the world stage, I think,” said Chris Heinritz, a co-owner of The Sink.

Just outside Denver's suburbs, Boulder has its own identity — and decades ago a very unique, hippie vibe. Well before Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, thousands of University of Colorado students and others would gather on campus to smoke pot every April 20.

Today, Boulder retains its charm at the foot of the sandstone Flatirons, a foothill range crisscrossed by hiking trails that begin at the Colorado Chautauqua, a cultural and performing arts hub dating to the 1800s. The pedestrian-only Pearl Street Mall with its nearby theaters could provide a similar central hub to Park City’s Main Street.

It’s no longer ideal for hippies, however. The university kicked the 4/20 weed fest off campus and soaring housing costs — the median home price is now $1.1 million — make living there unattainable for most.

Films have been shown in Boulder since 1898, when the first kinetoscope, a device co-invented by Thomas Edison, showed moving pictures to one person at a time at the Chautauqua Auditorium.

Besides Redford, Hollywood names who attended the University of Colorado include Dalton Trumbo, a screenwriter for “Spartacus” and “Roman Holiday” who was among the Hollywood Ten blacklisted for suspected communist sympathies in the late 1940s and 1950s.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Boulder locations featured as backdrops in the Woody Allen film “Sleeper” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” And Boulder was the fictional setting of the TV show “Mork & Mindy.”

Today, it's home to more than a dozen smaller film festivals, including the Boulder International Film Festival and Chautauqua Silent Film Series.

“It just makes perfect sense. We’re a small teeny tiny town but we’re filled with so much. We have so much art so much history, so much vibrancy,” said Hannah Givens, a University of Colorado graduate who lives in the Boulder area.

Sundance has called Park City home for 41 years. Past leaders of the festival said Redford chose the mountains of Utah as a space to foster independent filmmaking away from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood. Utah's iconic red rock landscapes have served as a backdrop to many films, including “Thelma and Louise,” “Forrest Gump" and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” for which the festival is named.

This year, thousands of festivalgoers affixed bright yellow stickers to their winter coats that read “Keep Sundance in Utah” in a last-ditch effort to convince its leaders to keep it local.

Sundance will have one more festival in Park City in January 2026 before moving to Boulder in 2027.

Over four decades, Sundance helped transform its quaint mountain hometown into a renowned winter destination. Home prices skyrocketed, luxury hotels emerged and some local businesses shuttered while others thrived.

Out-of-state visitors spent an estimated $106.4 million in Utah during the 2024 festival. Its total economic impact that year was estimated at $132 million, with 1,730 jobs for Utah residents and $70 million in wages for local workers. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said he was sad to see Sundance go, but the state's economy could sustain the loss.

Utah offered Sundance $3.5 million to stay. Colorado lawmakers proposed $34 million in tax credits over 10 years to lure it away.

Associated Press journalist Thomas Peipert contributed to this report from Boulder, Colorado.

Movies are advertised on the Boulder Theater marquee in Boulder, Colo., Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)

FILE - A Sundance festivalgoer walks past the Egyptian Theatre during the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 25, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

FILE - Snow coats the intermountain West, the Flatirons, on Feb. 12, 2022, in Boulder, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

FILE - The marquee of the Egyptian Theatre appears during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Jan. 28, 2020. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - The Flatirons mountain formation lies dusted white after a night of light snowfall, in Boulder, Colo., on Nov. 17, 2015. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A fire that damaged the entryway to the New Mexico Republican Party headquarters in Albuquerque is being investigated as arson, a fire official said Monday.

No suspect has been named in the Sunday morning blaze that’s under investigation by local authorities, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Incendiary materials were found on the scene, according to an ATF spokesperson. Spray paint on the side of the building read “ICE=KKK,” said Lt. Jason Fejer with Albuquerque Fire Rescue. Fejer said federal officials were taking over the arson investigation.

During a Monday press conference in front of the burned entryway — which was covered with plywood and had two burned doors propped against it — Republican leaders described the fire as a deliberate attack.

They sought to link the blaze to an “ongoing crime crisis” in New Mexico, including a shooting earlier this month in Las Cruces that left three people dead. Republican lawmakers have recently urged Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to exercise her authority to bring the legislators back to the Capitol to seek solutions to the violence.

“I urge the governor and Democratic colleagues to come to the table with meaningful solutions,” said state Senate Minority Leader Bill Sharer. “Let's turn the temperature down and work together.”

The building, which authorities said was unoccupied at the time of the fire, had extensive damage from smoke and water used by firefighters, leaving the GOP offices uninhabitable for now.

Surveillance video from the inside the building captured images of the fire, said party spokeswoman Ash Soular. She declined Monday morning to give further details and said law enforcement asked the party not to release the video or discuss its contents in detail.

The weekend fire followed vandalism across the U.S. in recent weeks targeting dealerships for Tesla, the electric car company owned by Elon Musk, who is leading Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash the federal workforce. Trump has also sought to ramp up deportation efforts against people living in the country illegally, led by agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Democrats, including Gov. Lujan Grisham and Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, denounced the fire and said politically motivated crimes are unacceptable.

“There is no excuse for political violence or vandalism of any kind, and I strongly condemn Sunday’s attack on the New Mexico Republican Party headquarters,” Lujan Grisham said in a Monday social media post.

Brown reported from Billings, Mont.

Republican Party of New Mexico Chairwoman Amy Barela, center, speaks during a news conference after a fire damaged the party's headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

New Mexico House Minor Floor Leader Gail Armstrong, center, speaks during a news conference after the Republican Party of New Mexico headquarters was damaged by a fire in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

Graffiti is seen on the Republican Party of New Mexico headquarters behind yellow tape in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Monday, March 31, 2025 (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

A container holding American flags sits outside the Republican Party of New Mexico headquarters following a news conference after a fire damaged the office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

Supporters gather in front of the Republican Party of New Mexico headquarters ahead of a news conference after the party's headquarters was damaged by a fire in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

Republican Party of New Mexico Chairwoman Amy Barela speaks during a news conference after the party's headquarters was damaged by a fire in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

Republican supporters hold flags as state party leaders and lawmakers speak during a news conference after the Republican Party of New Mexico headquarters was damaged by a fire in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

The charred entrance doors to the Republican Party of New Mexico headquarters sit propped up behind yellow tape in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)