At the final days of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, the festival's enduring power never felt more clear. I started coming to the Sundance Film Festival in 1987 (before it adopted its final name) and returned every year that an outlet was willing to send me. Back in my LA Weekly days, I was chronicling the rise of the independent film movement launched by Steven Soderbergh’s “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” in 1989. I interviewed Robert Redford enough that he’d recognize me at the