The Sundance Film Festival is coming to one sort of end, to match its many beginnings. Technically speaking, the festival has been running since 1978, when it began as the Utah Film Festival and showed a number of relatively recent American classics. But it didn’t move to Park City until 1981, and wasn’t taken over by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute until 1984 (though Redford was also involved in the festival itself before then). It wasn’t rechristened Sundance until 1991—just in time for it take on a larger cultural importance throughout the ’90s independent film boom, helping to break directors like Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, Steven Soderbergh, Rian Johnson, Miranda July, and Ryan Coogler, among many others.
Robert Redford passed away last year, and this year, Sundance holds its last edition in Park City. This change has been in the works for a while, and Sundance will continue in its new home of Boulder, Colorado. But it still seems like an apt time to reflect over the vast swath of cinema that got its start at this most American of film festivals, and offer a guide to four decades’ worth of the best Sundance movies.
This also necessitates some kind of narrowing-down process. In tribute to the fact that Sundance stands apart from other film festivals in the United States—in its January season, in its indie-film aesthetics, in its frequently pain-in-the-ass locations—we’ve limited this list to American fiction features. (The documentaries really deserve their own, separate list.) To spread the love around within that field, only one feature by any given director will be included. Finally, the list will skew heavily toward movies that were legitimately discovered at the festival, rather than screened there prior to an already-assured commercial release. Perhaps the most prominent example: Get Out showed at Sundance to great acclaim, but in retrospect that movie was going to make its gobs of money a month later with or without the festival-specific buzz. The trailer was already playing in theaters. Similarly, Memento won an award at Sundance but had already shown at other festivals. Whenever possible, we will be talking about movies that premiered, or at very least vaulted into public consciousness, at or because of Sundance. The final number? 42, to celebrate 42 years of the Sundance Institute’s involvement with the festival (though not, notably, a single pick from each year). Also, the years listed refer to the year the film screened at the festival, not the commercial release year, which is not always the same.
Even in this narrowed state, this list could easily have been 100 movies long. Any given Sundance line-up examined years later will have at least two or three movies well worth seeing, and often far more than that. The idea is to mix stone-cold classics with some less frequently mentioned titles and come up with a strong overview of American independents of the Sundance era. So if your favorite isn’t here, just assume that it would pretty easily place at number 43, unless it’s been specifically called out as overrated crap. (What’s independent cinema without a little hating thrown in?)
42. Party Girl (1995)
First Look Pictures/Everett Collection
