PARK CITY, UTAH Feb. 1 (UPI) -- The Sundance Film Festival paid tribute to founder Robert Redford at the 2026 festival. Slides featuring quotes from Redford circulated on screen before films, and a video of Redford speaking about Sundance played before every screening.
For a Redford film to play, the festival chose Downhill Racer, a 1969 film released over a decade before the festival began. The skiing drama was a film Redford was proud of and spoke about with festival filmmakers every year as an example of a film he believed in, even though the industry and public did not respond.
Redford's daughter, Amy, spoke before and after the screening. Characters like skier David Chappellett, who bristles with his coach (Gene Hackman) and love interest (Camilla Sparv), showed his resistance to Hollywood heartthrob archetypes, she said.
"I think he was suspect of fame from the beginning," Amy, 55, said at the screening. "He grew up in Los Angeles. He got to see the front row of the smoke and mirrors. He saw what it would do to people."
Part of Robert Redford's foundation of the Sundance Institute for independent filmmakers and the festival was to support the kind of stories Hollywood did not want to tell.
