Sundance Film Festival Director Eugene Hernandez poses in front of the Boulder Theater during last year's press conference announcing the fest's relocation. Credit: Eddie Clark
Colorado moviegoers get ready: Sundance is coming.
When the Sundance Film Festival lowered the curtain last month it capped off 45 years in the mountain town of Park City, Utah. When the curtain rises again for the famed film fest next January, it will do so in Boulder.
There’s a lot riding on Sundance’s relocation. With so many movies struggling to find a theatrical audience, and even more disappearing into deep streaming catalogues buried by algorithms, there’s hope the festival will remain the place where emerging filmmakers telling personal stories will be discovered, celebrated and connected.
How that might look when Sundance relocates to Boulder is yet to be determined. We finally know festival dates and venues, but we still don't have anything beyond speculation as to what economic impact the festival will have on the Front Range, if traffic is going to look like move-in weekend on steroids, or what celebrities will crowd the Boulder Theater.
None of these answers you’ll find here. The questions that rattle around this writer’s mind concern the movies — not just the titles themselves, but what artistic and cultural movements Sundance will bring to the Centennial State.
Sundance isn’t just 10 days of screenings and sponsor parties; it’s a market where undiscovered filmmakers come to peddle their wares and hope to catch buyers’ eyes. Bring the right story, and they could capture audiences’ hearts.
Some might even start a filmmaking revolution.
Take Richard Linklater’s Slacker. When the Texas-set day-in-the-life film played Sundance in 1991, its DIY aesthetic and eccentric cast of characters became the cinematic equivalent of The Velvet Underground’s debut record: Not everyone saw it, but those who did went and made a movie.
Kevin Smith was one of those people. He put $27,000 on credit cards and made Clerks. Smith’s DIY New Jersey-set day-in-the-life comedy featuring an eccentric cast of characters (sound familiar?) premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and launched his career. He wasn’t alone.
To honor this artistic call and response, the Sundance Institute, which hosts the festival, published the Sundance Film Festival 101 Watchlist — an attempt “to represent the wide range of films and filmmakers that have written the Festival’s history,” the Institute said in a press release.
“Paring down the nearly 4,000 films that have premiered at the Festival led to almost unconscionable omissions,” they continue, signaling out that while “artistry, social and cultural impact, popularity, influence, accolades, representation, overall balance” were factors, “the only official guideline was to choose 101 films that tell the story of the Sundance Film Festival.”
The list is impressive. Perusing it shows how much the Sundance Film Festival has shaped the cinematic and cultural landscape since the 1980s. You won’t find Slacker here — it played Sundance in 1991 after premiering in Texas in 1990 — but you will find Linklater’s Boyhood alongside Clerks, Reservoir Dogs, El Mariachi, Go Fish, Hoop Dreams, Momento, An Inconvenient Truth, Tangerine, Get Out, Call Me By Your Name, Past Lives, and so on.
Any list like this inspires reflection and nostalgia. That’s undeniable. But there’s another way to read this, a way that points toward hope for what’s to come when Sundance settles in Colorado.
Despite the synonymous connection with indie film, Sundance did not invent independent cinema. Ditto for Black cinema, queer cinema and documentary — they all existed long before the festival. But Sundance provided a stage for them, and it was a mighty big one. Now it’s Boulder’s turn.
We’ll have to wait until 2027 to see if Boulder’s Sundance can find the next big thing. Until then, here are 101 movies to get you ready for the seismic shift in the Colorado cinematic landscape that’s coming. Many of these movies are already someone’s favorite movie of all time. Now they can be yours.
Looking for a place to start on the Sundance 101 watchlist? Check out our staff picks below.
"Boyhood isn’t about the fear of growing up; it’s about the inevitability.
In one of the most audacious approaches to storytelling, writer-director Richard Linklater filmed his actors for a few days every year for 12 years, starting in 2002 and culminating in 2013, as Mason (Ellar Coltrane), sister Samantha (Linklater’s daughter Lorelei), and their two divorced parents (Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette) live, work and play their way across the state of Texas. Mom tries her hardest to raise the children, Dad delivers philosophical epithets every other weekend, and Mason and Samantha observe with wide-eyed wonder the adult world that surrounds them and will one day consume them.
Linklater is probably the most reflective director in American cinema. In Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater, the 2013 documentary from Gabe Klinger, Linklater outlines his philosophical thesis: 'I think ultimately the most interesting view out of a train is the back window. … You can’t really see out of the front of the train … but the back is yours, and that’s interesting because it’s what’s behind you, you know?'" - Michael J. Casey, film critic
"I was a college freshman when I first saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch — a born-again Christian and Republican in principle, if not by voter registration.
Many of the movies in my Intro to Film course blew my mind: The Big Lebowski, Run Lola Run. None challenged me as much as a movie about gender-queer punk rock musicians.
I knew zero out queer people in my life at that point (I was still years away from accepting my own sexuality), and the concept of gender as anything other than binary had never even entered my imagination. In some ways, that was good: I wasn’t conditioned to have today’s conservative knee-jerk reaction to trans or nonbinary people.
Hedwig functioned exactly as the best art often can. It gave me a human story to connect and expanded my perception of reality. The main character worked her way beneath my programmed discomfort and touched a deeper and truer place of empathy, love and compassion — for Hedwig and, eventually, those parts of myself." – Shay Castle, associate editor
"The term 'horror' conjures gobs of tired tropes and expectations — all of which you should leave at the door for Jane Schoenbrun's strange and stirring debut, We're All Going to the World's Fair.
With a minimalist set and two-person cast, this singular 2021 Sundance breakout dwells in the dark corners of the internet as a lonely teen named Casey (newcomer Anna Cobb) goes down the rabbit hole of the viral World's Fair Challenge. In this online roleplaying game, participants prick their fingers and repeat a strange mantra ("I want to go to the World's Fair") before posting video updates to document their ensuing physical and psychological "changes."
Casey connects with another challenger in the game (Michael J. Rogers), an anonymous middle-aged adult who becomes concerned by her increasingly disturbing posts. That's about all you can expect in the way of plot, but it's Casey's closed-off inner world that puts you under the spell of this creepypasta coming-of-age masterpiece. Is it a parable of gender dysphoria? A cautionary tale about the crippling loneliness of our siloed online lives? The film gives you just enough string to tug at these questions, but stops short of providing answers.
As psychological horror goes, it's subtle. If you go in expecting the bone-deep scares of a film like Hereditary (see below), you'll be disappointed. But if you can pick up on Schoenbrun's uncanny frequencies — executed to splashier effect in I Saw the TV Glow and the upcoming Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma — it will rip your heart out.
I am blinking back tears at my desk as I think of Casey, the sad child of a single father on the bewildering cusp of adulthood, speaking sheepishly into the void of her webcam: 'I swear, someday soon, I am just gonna disappear, and you won't have any idea what happened to me.'" - Jezy J. Gray, managing editor
"Ari Aster’s modern horror masterpiece Hereditary should come with a warning to wear a seatbelt.
On my first watch, Hereditary sent me flying out of my seat, colliding with the floor like a crash test dummy trapped inside of the director’s sick vehicle of a mind. Aster’s made a habit of shocking his audiences with unthinkable realities, evident in follow ups Midsommar and Beau is Afraid, and his 2018 feature debut as a writer and director should have been a warning sign to us all.
In the psychological thriller from A24, Aster places us in a literal dollhouse of horrors — a specially designed set to make you feel like you’re a child’s toy, just along for the ride — as you watch a grieving family descend into madness as they uncover hidden horrors of their family history. If you’ve yet to see any of Aster’s films, this is the place to start. And keep your hands, feet and head inside the vehicle at all times." – Tyler Hickman, multimedia producer
“The opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite are unforgettable. It’s a top-down shot of various items that will come to play throughout the movie: tater tots on a lunch tray, colorful keychains, a notebook with a sketch of a liger (tiger/lion hybrid), all set to The White Stripes’ “We’re Going to Be Friends.”
Jack White’s soft, playful voice sets a tone that carries the entire film, set in the entirely ordinary rural Idaho town of Preston. We soon meet an unforgettable cast of loveable idiots and their defining traits: Deb’s innocence, Kip’s yearning, Pedro’s optimism and Uncle Rico’s former glory. Then, of course, there is our curly-haired, wide-rimmed protagonist, Napoleon — played into the etches of comedy history by Jon Hader.
It’d be reasonable to conclude, during your first watch of this is movie, that it’s about nothing — a “week-in-the-life” sort of ordeal, anchored by unforgettable scenes in Rex-Kwon-Do’s studio or the Dynamite household. But then there’s the third act. Napoleon, moon boots and “Vote for Pedro” shirt in tow, is greeted with a roaring ovation by his peers, following his choreographed dance of Jamiroqui’s “Canned Heat.”
But then there is a brief pause. Patrick Street’s “Songs for a Found Harmonium” cues, and it cuts Pedro behind the curtain, cracking a smile as big as his bolo tie. Suddenly, you realize this stupid little film by Jared and Juresha Hess is a glorious, beautiful tale about breaking out of your shell.” – Carter Ferryman, marketing and sales
"The stretch Sundance ran from 1992 through 1995 is a shock to the cinematic system. Reservoir Dogs rewrote the narrative playbook, El Mariachi and Clerks became the patron saints of low-budget DIY cinema, Go Fish gave new queer cinema mainstream attention when the Samuel Goldwyn Company bought it for theatrical distribution, and Kids brought new conviction to the notion of challenging cinema.
Somewhat lost in that shuffle is Allison Anders’ magnificent Gas Food Lodging. Brooke Adams plays the mother, and Ione Skye and Fairuza Balk play her two teenage daughters as all three navigate romance, sex and life on the margins. It’s a familiar family drama rife with conflict and compassion, but this one still feels like a breath of fresh air, one that hasn’t soured in the past 30 years, thanks to Anders’ complete lack of sentimentality." - Michael J. Casey, film critic
"It’s hard to understate the sea change An Inconvenient Truth brought about in 2006. Back then, Al Gore was a bit of a punchline in politics, and documentaries weren’t de rigueur as they are today. Plus, it was just a big PowerPoint presentation, wasn’t it?
Yep, and An Inconvenient Truth might have been the most-watched PowerPoint of all time. After a rapturous premiere at Sundance, the doc, directed by Davis Guggenheim, went on to win two Academy Awards — Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song, Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need to Wake Up” — and grossed over $20 million domestic at the box office.
And while An Inconvenient Truth accomplished its primary goalof bringing the climate change conversation to center stage, its biggest legacy is how its success opened doors for the myriad call-to-action documentaries that followed. From the Sundance 101 list alone, The Cove (2009), Blackfish (2013) and All That Breathes (2022) continue the trend, but attend any festival, and you’re bound to see a dozen or more docs on the lineup, each one designed to make you wake up to issues ignored for far too long." - Michael J. Casey, film critic
SCREEN TIME: Sundance Film Festival makes its Boulder premiere January 21–31, 2027.
Editor's Note: This article has been updated from an earlier version to include recently announced dates and venues for Sundance Film Festival 2027.
