Brooklyn-based filmmaker Philip Thompson first attended the Sundance Film Festival in 2025, but even that couldn’t have prepared him for the frenzy of the 2026 festival.
Some made friends with strangers in the standby line for in-demand films. Others wandered the streets simply to experience the energy. There was networking and industry veterans and greenhorns letting loose at parties. And every Uber driver Thompson talked to was hell-bent on making bank from the tourists one last time before the festival moved to Boulder in 2027.
“Boulder is way more spread out, so that’s going to have a different feeling to it. … Park City is so crammed in and compact and condensed, it’s like everyone’s bumping into each other, all the cars are about to hit each other, and you really feel that energy,” Thompson said. “Sometimes it is a lot. I was there for a week, and by the end of it, I was ready to go home. But it is this magical feeling that you really can’t get anywhere else.”
There was a much different feeling at the Sundance Institute’s annual, three-day Screenwriters Lab.
Thompson, who is currently writing the script for his first feature film, had been invited to the Sundance Mountain Resort, along with 10 other fellows, to receive feedback from accomplished screenwriters like Michael Arndt, Lulu Wang and Meg LeFauve in the days leading up to the festival in January.
The lab’s vibe was exemplified by a screening of the 2016 Academy Award Best Picture winner, “Moonlight,” with co-writers Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney, two of the creative advisers who worked with the fellows on their scripts. Both hadn’t seen “Midnight” in years, Thompson said.
“I forgot that ‘Moonlight’ was about (McCraney’s) life. So, being able to talk to him and know him as a human being, and then watching the movie after was so emotional and devastating but beautiful. Both of them broke down in tears after the screening,” he recalled.
Ilyse McKimmie, deputy director of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, said the feeling of the lab was especially reverent this year as the fellows and lab organizers honored Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford, who died in September, by discussing what the actor and director meant to them.
McKimmie, who has worked for the Sundance Institute since 1999, remembers Redford as committed to his craft, forthright and funny.
“When he was there, he was just another person at the lab,” she said. “He always wanted to make it very much about the work and was very eager to get to know each fellow.”
While the death of Redford and the moving of the film festival to Boulder have left the Sundance Institute in a season of change, the Screenwriters Lab will continue to be held at Sundance Mountain Resort, the “ancestral home” of the Institute and Film Festival, as McKimmie called it.
The Directors Lab will also return to Sundance Mountain Resort in 2027 after it moved to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, in 2024 amid construction at the resort.
Redford founded the resort in 1969 and the Sundance Institute in 1981. Though he sold the resort in 2020, the location is rich with the Sundance Institute’s history and ties into Redford’s lifelong passions for nature and Native American rights.
“I have many wonderful memories of doing everything from snowshoeing in the winter to riding the ski lift in the summer and going hiking,” McKimmie said. “And traditionally, when our Directors Lab has been there in the past, we always kick things off by going up to Elk Meadows, which is a meadow a little bit up the road from the base of the mountain, and receive a blessing from a Ute tribal leader.”
McKimmie is hopeful that by maintaining a connection with Sundance Mountain Resort and continuing its outreach to Utah organizations, like the film programs of the University of Utah and Utah Valley University, that the Sundance Institute can “get away with having the best of both worlds,” she said, beginning “a version of our story in Boulder” while repaying Utah communities and ensuring they stay a key part of that story.
As for the Screenwriters Lab fellows, they’ll continue to walk away from the lab with their confidence shaken “in a good way,” as Thompson put it.
His script, “Dance Monkey Dance,” is a found-footage documentary about a fictional comedian, equal parts “Blair Witch Project” and a satire of fame and the commodification of Black artists by white audiences. He’s been working on it for well over a year.
He had to cut down his 180-page epic to 130 pages to even apply to the Screenwriters Lab. Now, he has a thousand new ideas — but the script is too long again.
Fellow Renee Zhan is also working through revisions. The London-based filmmaker has been working on her script, “BAOBAO,” for two years.
“BAOBAO” follows an only daughter returning home to China to find that her parents have had another baby. It’s inspired by a true story from a friend, studying in London, who returned to China in her mid-20s to find her parents had brought a baby brother into the world without letting her know.
The Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab at Sundance Mountain Resort brings industry veterans and greenhorns together to work through script edits. Credit: © 2026 Sundance Institute / Photo by Sam Emenogu 
Creative adviser Meg LeFauve and fellow Renee Zhan speak during the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab in January. Credit: © 2026 Sundance Institute / Photo by Sam Emenogu
“They’d done this at the time because the one-child policy was revoked, so they could finally have, basically, the son that they’ve always wanted, because it’s still such an important thing for the patriarchal system in China to have that boy,” Zhan explained. “I’m a very much spoiled only daughter, and the thought of, suddenly, this new intruder of a baby arriving … I just could imagine how angry I’d be.”
With such a wacky premise that becomes even wackier as supernatural horror and baby puppetry enter the mix, Zhan’s greatest challenge has been ensuring that the characters remain relatable rather than cartoonish even as the tone becomes increasingly surreal.
After receiving feedback from five industry veterans, Zhan is back to square one in developing her main character.
“To be honest, before I got to the labs, I was feeling pretty good about the script,” she said. “Now, I’m rethinking everything. I’m confused, but in a good way. I think the lab really challenged me to look deeper and to think about it in different directions, which I think, ultimately, is going to make it a much better script.”
And that, McKimmie said, is the point of the Screenwriters Lab.
“They’re not at the lab trying to find all the answers,” she said. “We always say, ‘Actually, if you leave asking the right questions, that’s a great result.’”