Ever since the Sundance Institute announced the film festival would move to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027, Park City Special Event Manager Chris Finney has been bombarded with phone calls from event organizers.

“Everyone’s calling me saying, ‘I’m here to save Park City (with a new January event),’” Finney said during a panel about local arts and culture at the Wasatch Back Economic Summit on Monday. “They’re talking about tens of thousands of people they want to bring in on day one.”

While Finney said the economic boon the festival brought to the Wasatch Back will be missed — particularly by local businesses like Park City Lock & Key, which always raked in cash from festivalgoers locking themselves out of their Airbnbs — it also put a strain on year-round residents and city resources.

“If you think about everything that happens during Sundance, there’s someone standing out in the cold, directing traffic or working a crosswalk or loading people into cars or standing in an intersection,” Finney said.

Jocelyn Scudder, executive director of the Arts Council of Park City & Summit County, said residents of the Wasatch Back should focus on establishing the next Sundance Institute instead of the next Sundance Film Festival. In other words, she sees greater potential in the creation of spaces for artists than events to draw in tourists.

“We are very heavily reliant on these big events: Sundance, Kimball Arts Festival, Savor the Summit,” she said. “If we’re able to have these really amazing spaces for arts and culture and activity and experiences to happen, then we will see 12-month, year-round activity act more as kindling for the local community, rather than these high-impact events that are great for our economy, but they’re hard on our community.”

One of those spaces could be the Heber Valley Arts Center planned for east of the Utah Valley University Wasatch campus, encompassing an outdoor amphitheater, indoor theater and rehearsal, community and gallery spaces. The Wasatch County Arts Council hopes to build the arts center by the 2034 Winter Olympics. 

Phil Jordan, co-chair of the Heber City Arts Advisory Committee and an executive at entertainment company Next Level Ops, said the Wasatch Back’s greatest need is rehearsal space for artists.

“It is, generally, across the United States, the debit that is always identified first and generally supported last because it doesn’t generate a return on investment,” he said. 

He added that the Heber Valley Arts Center will bring a “rising tide” for Wasatch Back residents, who will be able to express themselves authentically in the new space. That, he said, will attract new residents to both counties.

Scudder said Summit County residents are excited about the Heber Valley Arts Center.

“I’ve heard from a lot of artists who’ve caught wind of that and (are) like, ‘Well, maybe I’ll go down there and exhibit,’ or ‘Maybe I’ll go down there and perform,’” she said. 

While the Heber Valley Arts Center is a long way from breaking ground, Heber City’s arts and culture scene is growing rapidly, explained Rachel Kahler, executive director of nonprofit Community Alliance for Main Street.

Kahler has a contract with Heber City to organize at least 50 local events in Main Street Park annually. The city’s goal is to build up to 250 events annually. 

Kahler has taken the advice of Park Silly Sunday Market Executive Director Kate McChesney: “Be mindful of what you’re doing and don’t grow too fast.”

Park City Councilor Tana Toly provided Savor the Summit as an example of an event that has grown into a tourist event rather than one for locals.

“We can’t afford to go do that, and so, we’re looking at other events during the summer,” she said.

Kahler said organizers need to recognize the pressures events can put on local communities. She provided Ice Castles — which she was previously marketing manager of — as an example. 

Ice Castles started in Midway’s town square in 2011. 

“If you remember back then, they basically took over downtown,” she said. “Every neighborhood was angry because, instead of Swiss Days, which takes over for two days, they had seven weeks of lines and people and parking.”

Ice Castles then moved to the Homestead Resort and later Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in response to resident feedback. The attraction became beloved and brought an influx of economic activity for small business owners, like David Medina, owner of Lola’s Street Kitchen.

“David told me those first couple years, he had such a small restaurant. But because of the Ice Castles, it kept him in business to (the point) where he now is a destination restaurant,” Kahler said. “These are factors that you can’t often gauge with data, but you can with relationships.”

Kahler’s example represents how arts and cultural events can provide economic spillover for local businesses. But the benefits of the arts aren’t purely economic, Scudder said. 

“Creating art and experiencing art is what makes us distinctly human, and it allows us to connect,” she said. “It not only supports our community, but it supports our well being as people. I hope that people think of arts as a social investment.”

Ciara Steele from the Utah Arts Collective said the organization’s Nutcracker Tea Party demonstrates that. Every year, the Utah Arts Collective collaborates with local businesses — for example, Midway’s Dandelion Gelato — and donates all proceeds to the Wasatch County Children’s Justice Center, which provides services to children undergoing the child abuse investigative process.

“We’re all working together, and there’s a local benefit,” Steele said. “We educate our dancers about what the (Children’s Justice Center) provides, so they understand what they’re serving with their talent. The parents get behind that, and the community does, (too).”

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The departure of the Sundance Film Festival weighed heavily Friday over a panel of five Park City arts leaders at the annual Park City Leadership Symposium. 

Ben Anderson, founder of Park City Song Summit, called the festival the “fair-haired child” of Park City’s arts scene that “gave us the one-fingered salute” and disowned the family. He and the other panelists contemplated how Sundance’s siblings in the Park City arts scene might fill the void left by the festival.

For Katy Wang, executive director of Park City Film, the biggest void left by the Sundance Film Festival that she hopes to fill is inspiring Park City’s youth. 

“My kids, growing up here, are saying all of these stories that they got exposed to are spreading their imaginations, sparking that creativity and (making them) go, ‘I could be that,’” she said.

Jamie Wilcox, executive director of Egyptian YouTheatre, agreed.

“We cannot talk about centering the arts if we’re not talking about giving these opportunities to young people,” she said.

She added that not all children will grow up to be artists — some may even work jobs that don’t exist yet, particularly due to advances in AI — but that the skills children gain by being grounded in the arts are essential. 

“Our kids are coming back and telling us, ‘It helps me with interviews. It helps me speak up for myself and others. It helps me collaborate,’” she said. “If these aren’t skills we’re teaching them and in a fun way, we’re giving them a disadvantage in their future.”

Meanwhile, Brian Richards, executive director of Mountain Town Music, thought the biggest void the festival left was the presentation of art that takes creative risks or discusses difficult subject matters, challenging perspectives and sparking conversations.

“I’m not sure that we, as an arts and cultural collective, are doing enough right now to continue to shape those future discussions,” he said.

He then brought up musical plants.

“I had a thing come across my desk. This artist was going to bring in a bunch of plants, and they were going to connect microphones to the plants, and they were going to create music,” he recalled.

But he couldn’t think of a suitable venue for the artist. 

That led straight into a discussion of arts spaces, or the lack thereof, in Park City. 

Jocelyn Scudder, executive director of the Arts Council of Park City and Summit County and moderator of the panel, pointed out that the need for such spaces was outlined in the Arts & Culture Master Plan created by the Arts Council, which was approved by the Park City and Summit County councils earlier this year.

Anderson said he hopes that manifests in the form of a facility similar to the Center for the Arts in Crested Butte, Colorado. The Center for the Arts was established in 1985 to revive the ski town, and in 2019, a new, 28,000-square-foot building was opened, costing about $20 million.

“They do food and wine festival outdoors. They do a summer concert music series outdoors. Indoors, they do art, music, drama. They have culture. There’s 1,600 people in Crested Butte. What are we doing?” Anderson asked. “We are so far behind. We are so lacking.”

Richards agreed. He asked whether anyone regularly saw live music on Main Street. A few raised their hands. 

He then asked where people see live music most. People shouted out venues like The Marquis and The Spur. Richards pointed out that those were venues for patrons 21 and older and emphasized the need for spaces for youth musicians. 

He added that Park City live music is “beholden” to the whims of ski resorts during the winter, which tend to host only DJs.

Anderson described bringing live music to Park City as “an uphill, Sisyphean battle because we don’t have the space.”

Wrapping up the panel, Scudder asked each panelist how they wanted to look back on the arts scene 10 years from now.

“In this town, we always joke that you could throw a stick and hit an Olympian. I would love to be able to throw a stick and hit an artist,” Wang said. 

All agreed that they wanted further investment in the arts scene, diversifying Park City’s portfolio so the tourism industry can survive even during warm winters.

But for that investment to happen, words have to turn into actions.

“I have been in so many of these meetings, going back to sitting up at the loft of the costume area at the Egyptian Theatre with Randy Barton, trying to outline how we could move forward as an arts and cultural society. All we’ve done for 15 years is talk about it. We need each and every one of you in this room to pursue action now,” Richards said. 

“I don’t know how much we have talked about AI today, but we are at a critical junction, and we are going to experience a lot of pain. And there is no way around that,” he continued. “And we are going to need one another. We’re going to need artists. We’re going to need community. … When we are sitting here in 2036, we’re going to say, ‘We did it. We provided joy. We provided community gatherings. We contributed to the wellness of our community.’”

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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.

“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.’”

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It was five or six years ago when Wasatch County Arts Council President Pat Sweeney ran into the late Robert Redford at the Wasatch County Library. 

Redford looked like he was researching something with a friend, but Sweeney didn’t eavesdrop. She did, however, approach the Oscar-winning actor and director to tell him about the Heber Valley Arts Center planned for 4 acres east of the Utah Valley University Wasatch campus. 

The center is planned to encompass an outdoor amphitheater, indoor theater and rehearsal, community and gallery spaces. The project, which Sweeney estimates will cost $100 million, began in December 2023 with a 50-year lease at a rate of $1 per year between the Arts Council and Heber City. The nonprofit hopes to build the center by the 2034 Winter Olympics.

Redford loved the idea.

“He said, ‘This is exactly what the area needs. This is how we’re going to grow and improve the quality of life in this back area,’” Sweeney recalled. “The man had a vision, and the man’s vision didn’t just encompass film.”

Sweeney’s initial hope for the Heber Valley Arts Center’s indoor theater was to use it as an official screening venue for the Sundance Film Festival, much like The Ray and Yarrow Theatres in Park City.

But when the 42-year-old institution announced in March that it would be packing its bags and moving to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027, the dream of Wasatch County becoming more involved in the festival was crushed.

“We’re still going to have (the theater) because it wasn’t dependent on Sundance, but it’s unfortunate because we knew that it would fill the house for several days,” Sweeney said. 

The loss of a potential screening venue is perhaps the biggest impact the Wasatch County arts scene will feel as a result of the film festival’s departure. 

Sweeney said most of Wasatch County’s arts organizations are in hibernation in January and February, when Sundance takes place, so there won’t be a loss of an audience of wandering festivalgoers. 

While there aren’t any film organizations or nonprofits in Wasatch County, she added she’s hopeful Wasatch and Summit counties can come together to create a new film festival to fill the void left by Sundance. 

She imagines a boutique event taking place over the summer instead of the winter, perhaps in conjunction with the Park City Kimball Arts Festival. If such a film festival were to arise, she would love to offer the Heber Valley Arts Center as a venue to bring the two counties together. 

“It might not draw people from across the country right away, but we could have something of our own and make it our own,” she said.

Sweeney’s desire to bring a local focus back to film festivals in the Wasatch Back was echoed by Alicia Stockman, a Heber City folk Americana singer-songwriter and Wasatch County Arts Council administrative assistant.

Stockman has lived in Wasatch and Summit counties her entire life. Her fond memories of Sundance include volunteering at the Egyptian Theatre to get free tickets in her 20s, experiencing virtual reality for the first time at one of the festival’s art installations and watching KT Tunstall perform at the ASCAP Music Café. 

But she thinks the festival’s local focus has diminished over time.

“It just got really big and unwieldy and became all about brands and sponsorships, and that took away from that art experience, I think,” Stockman said. “Now, it kind of feels like it’s so exclusive, and it’s hard to get into. It’s not as compelling for locals to really be able to participate in it.”

That point was hammered home when Stockman performed at the Chase Sapphire lounge during the 2024 festival.

“For me to get my mom to come and see me play at Sundance, I had to pull strings,” she said. “I knew the caterer, and that’s how we got people in.”

Thankfully, the security recognized Stockman’s mother the next year her daughter performed at the same venue and let her right in.

While Stockman acknowledged the departure of Sundance will have its impacts on the Heber Valley arts scene with the Wasatch Back no longer attracting the same creative minds it used to, she’s also hopeful the valley can forge its own future in the arts. 

“With our population growing as much as it has, I think we’re at this precipice, this opportunity, to really define who we are culturally and artistically,” she said. “We have a knack for making things accessible to families. … That’s something that sets us apart.”

As for Sweeney, she looks forward to the ongoing development of the Heber Valley Arts Center — the panel of community members and elected officials behind the project should land on a concept design for the outdoor amphitheater in the spring — and the role it will play in capturing audiences in Summit, Utah and Salt Lake counties.

But her outlook about the departure of Sundance was a bit more somber.

“Next to the mountains, it is the most beautiful thing in the Wasatch Back,” she said. “I’m sorry to see it go.”

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Can storytelling save the Great Salt Lake?

That was the question posed at “Stay Salty: Storytelling, Community and the Fight for the Great Salt Lake,” a panel on Tuesday by The Impact Lounge. 

The Impact Lounge was founded in 2024 as a way to bring storytellers and change-makers together in panel discussions. It operates at film festivals like South by Southwest, the Cannes Film Festival and, most recently, the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it was hosted at The Prospector Conference Center and Theater in Park City the first week of the festival.

Tuesday’s panel featured discussion from four activists fighting to bring awareness to the drying of the Great Salt Lake.

One of these activists was Chandler Rosenberg, co-founder of Save Our Great Salt Lake, a coalition to build awareness and education about the issue through rallies, social media and art. She said the problem with storytelling around the ecological crisis is that it often looks for someone to blame.

“I think we’re locked into this ‘us versus them’ narrative. Like, ‘The lake’s not saved. That must mean the decision-makers hate the lake,’” she said. “It breeds a lot of antagonism from our community against the decision-makers. It breeds mistrust. And then they are afraid to talk about anything with us because they think we’re going to call them out.”

Rosenberg said farmers are also pitted as scapegoats in storytelling around the crisis.

Agriculture, particularly crops like alfalfa and grass hay, accounts for 74% of water consumption from the Great Salt Lake Basin, according to a 2025 report prepared for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.

“We urbanites in Salt Lake City are quick to cling onto that because it’s an easy narrative to say, ‘It’s their fault. It’s not us. They have to change. We don’t,’ when really, all of us need to be involved,” Rosenberg said. “We’re all in this together. We can’t afford to have division.”

Fellow panelist Meisei Gonzalez is democratizing narratives around the Great Salt Lake through podcast “Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories.” 

The podcast explores personal impacts of the crisis: how the shrinking of the lake is impacting brine shrimpers’ livelihoods, how the disabled community is affected by the smog created by lake inversion and what it’s like to be an inmate at the nearby Utah State Correctional Facility.

“Whoever has the mic sometimes feels like the most credible. And we’ve given the mic a lot to the lawmakers, to the scientists, to the technical experts — Very needed. I love a graph,” Gonzalez said. “But handing over that mic to community members makes them feel credible.”

Rosenberg said ensuring community members’ stories are heard by policymakers remains a challenge for grassroots organizations.

“The goal is to have the community driving the policy agenda. And I think right now, we’re a little bit in the world of, ‘What are the short-term, reactive solutions or policy ideas to get water to the lake?’ which, of course, that’s what we need. This is an emergency,” she said. “But I think it does distract us. I think if we ask community members what they want, it would be more of the deeper, long-term systemic change.”

The panelists agreed that the drying of the Great Salt Lake is not just a water crisis, but a chance to examine overconsumption, giving back stewardship of land to Native American tribes and the interconnectedness of the Earth’s ecological health with humanity’s physical health.

While storytelling alone won’t save the Great Salt Lake, it certainly plays no small role. 

The Tuesday panel took place five days after the Sundance premiere of documentary “The Lake” brought global attention to the crisis. Gov. Spencer Cox appeared at the Salt Lake City screening the next day and recommitted to his promise of filling the lake by 2034. 

The final question of the “Stay Salty” panel was what kind of stories the panelists wished to tell about the Great Salt Lake in 10 years, two years after the passing of Cox’s deadline.

“I want to tell a happy story,” Gonzalez said. “But I also want to be able to tell a story that’s really honest, to be able to say, ‘It was a scary time. There were lots of failures. And we didn’t get it right the first time. But we kept trying.’”

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Sundance Film Festival alumnus Sam Green began his documentary, “The Oldest Person in the World,” out of simple curiosity about why people are fascinated with the record holders. Instead, what ensued is a 10-year odyssey exploring mortality, fate and the passage of time.

Green started filming on July 7, 2015, in Brooklyn, New York. At that time, the oldest person in the world was 116-year-old Susannah “Miss Susie” Mushatt Jones. Green spent the day filming Miss Susie and her 86-year-old niece, Lavilla. Although Miss Susie mostly remained in a trance-like sleep, Green recalled the interview as one of the most inspiring he’d ever done and said the profound display of love and care somehow changed him.

The documentary’s focus eventually shifted, with Green exploring deeper themes about the mystery of life and death as he spent the next decade filming the seven other oldest people in the world. 

“Why does this resonate with us in this strange way? And what does it mean? And how do we navigate through life with all these big mysteries? Nobody knows how long they’re going to live. Could it end tomorrow? Could you be 116 years old? Nobody knows,” he said.

Green recognized audiences might be bored watching a 90-minute film where (spoiler alert?) the main characters die. He even considered including scenes from the 1993 film “Groundhog Day” to show the repetitive narrative of life one day after another, but felt there needed to be a positive narrative.

So, he crafted a documentary focused on each supercentenarian while weaving larger concepts to keep people in their seats.

“My first take on the movie was that I’ll just film each person and make a little portrait, and that’ll be it. But after a while, it gets old, and you’re just like ‘Not another one.’ It sort of becomes this relentless thing,” Green said.

Part of the storytelling process involved intertwining moments from Green’s personal life — the birth of his son, the death of his younger brother, a serious illness and conversations with his 92-year-old mother — which served as touchstones in the cycle of life and as a litmus test for the passing years. Green said it was challenging to share certain details, but a team of editors helped him decide how much information to share.

The effect accentuates “the randomness of fate and the joy and profound human experience of being alive.” 

Green started editing “The Oldest Person in the World” early into filming and worked on it continuously over the 10 years to maintain a chronological structure. There are also moments where he breaks the fourth wall to address the documentary’s conventions and engage with the audience directly. The final version blends vulnerability, humor and philosophical reflection with Green’s signature storytelling.

Green acquiesced that most of the interviews were happenstance. The first woman filmed, Miss Susie, was asleep the whole time, while the last, Ethel Caterham — who still holds the title for Oldest Person in the World at 116 as of Tuesday — was among the most cogent. 

They also vary in what their “secret” is to living a long life. Sister André, a French nun who lived to be 118, declared there is no secret because God decides. Her rival, Kane Tanaka, said it doesn’t help to dwell on negative things and that regret isn’t helpful. One of the only similarities between the record holders Green interviewed is that they’re all women.

He experienced a particularly powerful moment with the documentary’s second subject, Emma Morano, who was the world’s oldest living person from May 2016 to April 2017. Morano, who was Italian, became confused at one point during filming, and Green was unsure how to comfort her without the translator in the room. He went over to the woman, and they began caressing each other’s hands and staring into each other’s eyes. 

In most circumstances, Green said, holding hands with a stranger and making intense eye contact would be uncomfortable — but this was an oddly magical experience. 

While society is preoccupied with the oldest people in the world, Green realized the obsession with longevity is tied to human discomfort surrounding mortality. He raises questions throughout the film about whether he’ll live to be old himself. Such thoughts can either keep someone up at night or help them realize each moment is precious.

“I think part of the fascination with the oldest person in the world is it’s like the flip side of the fear of death. I think if we were a little … less freaked out by death, we would probably be less fascinated by it,” Green said.

The director concedes “The Oldest Person in the World” is a never-ending project. Green wrapped filming on July 7, 2025, for the first part of the documentary that premiered at the film festival on Friday. His idea is to continue filming the oldest person in the world, or a similar anthology series, for the rest of his life, eventually passing the legacy on to his son and his son’s future children.

Green’s advice on living fully is first, not to listen to him, and second, to reach a point of appreciation each moment for yourself.

“Every day, you wake up, and you’re healthy and able to do things and living a pretty great life is a miracle,” he said. “It’s good to enjoy it.”

‘The Oldest Person in the World’ in-person screenings

• 11:30 a.m., Jan. 30, Library Center Theatre
• 9:40 a.m., Jan. 31, Megaplex Redstone

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The production of the Singaporean Sundance short film “Fruit (Buah)” may have been cursed.

While filming in a Malaysian jungle, a leech crawled up the leg of a cinematographer wearing baggy cargo pants. The site in the middle of the woods where the crew set up camp had been abandoned since the COVID-19 pandemic. Lead actor Tysha Khan could have sworn she saw the spirit of a woman in her bathroom. When Khan asked a producer to check, she came in, confirmed the suspicions and ran out of the room.

And by complete coincidence, the final take of the film was scene six, shot 66.

“She was so scared,” Khan said about director Jen Nee Lim. “She literally had to go outside and smoke. Her hairs were all standing. She was like, ‘We need to shoot something else so that no one on this film dies.’”

Production ended on scene six, shot 69, with the crew offering a closing prayer in Malay for good measure.

“Fruit (Buah)” may have been cursed for good reason.

The film explores the Pontianak from Malaysian folklore, a female ghost who died during childbirth, who preys on men and pregnant women. But Lim offers a twist on typical depictions of the Pontianak, pitting her as the savior of a pregnant woman denied access to abortion.

“Instead of demonizing her once again, why not (depict her as) a liberator of other women who wants to be free from the societal expectation of what she needs to be?” Lim said. 

Pulling from Malaysian folklore was one reason Lim, who has Chinese heritage, chose to translate the film’s dialogue to Malay, even though she does not speak the language. 

Lim hired someone to translate the film into Malay, but lead actor Tysha Khan, a native speaker, suspected the individual used Google Translate, so she retranslated the script herself. 

“There’s a lot of agency because she let us say how we wanted to be portrayed,” Khan said.

For example, Khan said it would make sense for the film’s setting for the Malay characters to eat on the floor with their hands. But it would also be stereotypical. 

“It’s very exoticized,” she said. “Me and (actor) Wan (Ahmad) were very adamant that when our family in the film has meals, we want it to be set at a table.”

Lim described the Singaporean film scene as “very divided along racial lines,” with the country’s three primary ethnic groups — Chinese, Malay and Indians — making films in their own language and focusing on their own culture. Lim breaks those boundaries with “Fruit (Buah).” 

With the film’s North American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Lim hoped to start conversations around abortion access across national boundaries, too. 

The film takes place before abortion was legalized in Singapore in 1974. Today, Singapore has a very progressive abortion policy compared to countries like the United States. Abortion is available on request up to six months of pregnancy with full confidentiality.

“America is not the only country that has very harsh abortion laws. And there are still a lot of women out there in the world who are facing this problem,” Lim said. “Even though the story is very specific in terms of the look and the feel from my part of the world, what it’s addressing is actually something that’s very global and universal.”

The impacts of denying abortion to a pregnant woman who does not want to be a mother are best seen in the central character, Siti. Khan described her as quiet and contained, full of fierce determination but stuck in a world that doesn’t allow her to externalize it.

“People deserve to determine their own fate, and people are going to determine their own fate no matter what,” Khan said. “And when you stand in the way of that, it’s very dangerous.”

“Fruit (Buah)” premiered as part of the Short Film Program 2 at 3:15 p.m. on Jan. 24 at The Yarrow Theatre.

Learn more and reserve tickets at festival.sundance.org.

‘Fruit (Buah)’ in-person screenings

• 3 p.m., Jan. 28, Broadway Centre Cinemas 3
• 10:20 a.m., Jan. 29, Megaplex Redstone 3
• 10 a.m., Jan. 30, Holiday Village Cinemas 2

The post Sundance short film ‘Fruit (Buah)’ is a drama with a supernatural twist appeared first on Park Record.

Norwegian filmmaker Markus Tangre began making puppets at 11, as soon as his grandmother taught him to use a sewing machine. Like Dr. Victor Frankenstein, he felt mad with power as he brought his creatures to life. 

Inspired by the technicalities of Jim Henson, the wonky expressiveness of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network shows, and the muted colors and melancholic feel of Eastern European animations, Tangre has stitched together his first short film, “Ivar,” which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

“Ivar” is a four-minute monologue by Anne, a grumpy puppet with a furrowed brow and permanent frown, that begins with her noticing her husband Ivar’s rank scent as she lies next to him, trying to fall asleep. That smell leads her to vent everything she hates about Ivar, from his stubby neck to his laugh to his lack of ambition.

The music and sound design by Benjamin Nerheim provide the perfect soundtrack to spiraling hatred. The whistle from a tea kettle represents her anger boiling over before leading into a montage of surreal imagery backed by one long, operatic note.

That montage includes several 2D animations by Steph Hope, including a bald, rubberhose human punching out another in a bar, and a glass of milk shattering and transforming into the form of Anne. 

While a live-action film might use stock footage for this rapid-fire montage of seething imagery, “Ivar” creates its own stock footage to fit within the universe’s aesthetic.

The film has a grainy quality meant to look like an avant-garde 1970s tape dug up from the archives and hammers home the dreary social realism. And while the puppets Tangre sewed in childhood were vibrant and cheery, inspired by “The Muppets,” he’s taken a much different approach to the world of “Ivar.”

“I’m trying to grossify the puppet design a little bit,” he said. “I think it’s cool when they look gross and weird and still are able to have human emotions.”

Tangre’s puppet-making process begins by sculpting the creature out of clay, then making a mold and pouring expanding foam into it. From there comes the addition of details like eyes and hair, a somewhat improvisational process that informs the character far more than pre-planned design sketches do. 

“You learn stuff about the character as you go,” Tangre said. “If you squish the face, and it makes a weird expression, then, it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s a cranky guy.’”

Many puppets in the film appear for only a few seconds: a pig-nosed motorcyclist, Ivar’s friend with a pear-shaped head and a yipping, yarn dog with spindly legs.

Attention to detail is Tangre’s greatest accomplishment with “Ivar.” The sets are intricately designed with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it details. A brief shot in a bathroom, for example, reveals a bottle of valium and a Russian nesting doll on the shelves.

Tangre’s philosophy was that “Every scene is important to build the world. If you skip out on a few details, then you don’t really buy it.”

As for Ivar, the viewer only catches a few glimpses of his grotesque form before the climax, from a shot of his felt mouth messily chewing what looks like baby food to a 2D-animated distortion making him look like a cross between a vulture and Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.”

But when the true Ivar is revealed, sitting upright in bed as the crescent moon hits his face, he looks meek and even sweet. This is the crux of the film. Does Anne truly hate her husband, or is she simply experiencing the resentments and annoyances that can arise in long-term relationships? 

Tangre said that’s up for the viewer to decide, but he hopes that he’s accomplished his goals for the film: to combine the techniques of arthouse cinema with a medium often derided as childish, and to tell a human story with very inhuman characters.

Tangre described the atmosphere on set as highly technical. A shot of Anne and Ivar in bed took three hours of takes because of all the actions involved: pulling up a bedsheet, turning off a lamp and making the two puppets smooch. All the while, Tangre and fellow puppeteer David Bjørnstad were crammed nearly on top of each other underneath the bed, holding their hands up in the air and watching the takes on monitors.

But there was also a magical, joyous feeling as crew members’ eyes lit up, watching these cartoonish characters come to life in front of them.

“Once you see the puppets onscreen, you believe them straight away, I guess, because they have such blank faces. Once they look into the camera or look at each other, and they say something, you can put your own real feelings or emotions into it,” Tangre said. “I guess being a puppet makes it a bit more universal.”

“Ivar” premiered as part of the Short Film Program 4 at 9 p.m. on Jan. 25 at The Yarrow Theatre. Learn more and reserve tickets at festival.sundance.org.

‘Ivar’ in-person screenings

• 5:30 p.m., Jan. 26, Megaplex Redstone 3
• 9 p.m., Jan. 31, Broadway Centre Cinemas 6
• 3:15 p.m., Feb. 1, Holiday Village Cinemas 3

Online

• 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1

The post Sundance short film ‘Ivar’ is a social realist powerhouse of puppetry appeared first on Park Record.

Director Sharon Liese said it’s not uncommon to see national articles about attempts to silence the press or restrict free speech these days. But when such news happened in her backyard, the documentary filmmaker knew she had to pursue the story.

“SEIZED” is the culmination of Liese’s time in Marion County, Kansas, where she investigates the August 2023 police raid on the community’s newspaper, the Marion County Record. The feature-length documentary examines decades of tensions leading up to the raid and the subsequent events that thrust the small town into the national spotlight.

The documentary starts by providing background on the raid, which was led by the Marion Police Department on the Marion County Record and the home of its editor and publisher, Eric Meyer. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother was also at the residence when it was searched, and she died shortly after. 

Viewers watch as the events unfold “in real time,” using body-cam and surveillance footage paired with interviews featuring a unique cast of characters who help bring humor and nuance to the documentary. 

After all, Liese said “SEIZED” isn’t just about freedom of the press: It’s about humanity.

“I hope people have the same experience that I did when I kind of uncovered everything that was going on because, at first, it seemed like this egregious attack on the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment and the Privacy Protection Act. And while it is that it is, still is, it’s more than that,” Liese explained. “It’s about small towns. It’s about tension between a community and its newspaper, and it’s also about tensions between people. … Everyone can relate to something like what people were feeling in this film, whether it’s alienation from other people, frustration at not being heard.”

Liese returned to the Sundance Film Festival with “SEIZED,” which premiered on Sunday, following the debut of her 2023 Sundance short documentary, “PARKER.”

“SEIZED” stands out among Liese’s other works because the story was already in the spotlight. Typically, she finds interesting people and centers a topic around them in an intimate setting — building the story from the inside out. For example, “PARKER” is about three generations of a Black Kansas City family choosing their own last name. 

Still, Liese was curious about what was happening in Marion County — about a two-hour drive from her home in Overland Park, Kansas. So, she went.

Liese spent a long time in the community, working to build trust with its residents and draw out interesting, colorful characters.

“You have to earn people’s trust, and our big challenge was earning the trust of the people who did not like the newspaper,” she said. “Those people at first thought that we were hired by the Marion County Record to do this documentary. They didn’t want to talk to us, but they would always just throw in when we were filming on the street, ‘There’s another side to the story.’” 

As a filmmaker, Liese said she thrives on curiosity. This led her to consider why some town residents were so upset at the local paper and what it was about this dynamic that led to the crossroads.

It took Liese about a year to earn a sit-down with the mayor, which was a pivotal moment for the filmmaking process. He saw that the documentarians were interested in hearing what he had to say and helped pave the way in reducing others’ skepticism. 

“SEIZED” takes a people-first approach, creating an organic evolution in the film’s narrative and causing sympathies to shift “moment to moment.” 

The documentary isn’t a history lesson on the raid or the ethics of journalism, but rather addresses universal human experiences and tension between the press, government and small-town residents. “SEIZED” explores the purpose of local news as well as broader questions about community and accountability. 

Liese said everyone has blind spots, and the film is intended to make people think about their own. She thinks viewers will go into “SEIZED” expecting it to be one thing and leave realizing it’s something different. 

“I think that the film, I hope, probably raises more questions than it answers,” Liese said. “But I do think it’s important to ask ourselves, ‘What is the purpose of a local newspaper?’ and ‘What kind of relationship should the newspaper have with its readers and its community?’ and ‘Is there a point where newspapers might go too far, or journalism may go too far?’”

‘SEIZED’ in-person screenings

• 9:30 p.m., Jan. 27, Broadway Center Cinemas, Salt Lake City
• 8:30 a.m., Jan. 29, Library Center Theatre
• 2:30 p.m., Jan. 31, Megaplex Redstone

Online

• 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1

The post ‘SEIZED’ raises questions about small-town journalism at Sundance appeared first on Park Record.

An immersive, meditative melody plays over a mosaic of mossy greens, muddy browns and brilliant blues of the Batture — a community on the edge of the Mississippi River  — as a steady, wise voice breaks the sound: “Look how beautiful it is, yeah. Look. Lovely day.”

The man, who isn’t named until the credits, admires the world outside his home with his pet bird, Baby, resting on his hand. 

Alexandra Kern, the director of “Some Kind of Refuge,” which premiered as part of the Sundance Film Festival short film program on Saturday, said the opening sequence is intended to show the slower Southern pace of life. But it’s also reflective of the first time she met Jules Cote, when he opened his home to her.

Cote is one of the oldest residents in the Batture, a 200-year-old, seasonally flooded settlement outside the levees in New Orleans. Only nine homes remain on a nearly 6-mile stretch that once held hundreds. The Batture is considered an outsider settlement, “where survival depends on resourcefulness and a deep respect for nature.”

Kern is from New Orleans, but she hadn’t heard about the Batture until she met producer Colin Cadarette at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Cadarette, meanwhile, became curious about the community after reading “They Called Us River Rats: The Last Batture Settlement of New Orleans” by Macon Fry, who is also featured in the documentary.

Cadarette reached out to Kern after watching another short she made and introduced her to the book — and to the Batture. Soon, the pair was committed to creating their own cinematic archive of the community.

“Some Kind of Refuge” isn’t an adaptation of Fry’s book. Rather, it’s an exploration into the unique lives of Cote and Fry and what it means for the men to live “outside the constraints of modern society.” Kern said she wanted to explore the modern fantasy of escaping society while also documenting the history of the Batture, which she said is under threat from climate change, gentrification and greed.

The director knocked on doors before filming started, meeting with all of the Batture’s residents. What became clear to Kern was the community’s profound wisdom and way of life that is disappearing from the world. She felt an instinctual pull to the project, with the story unfolding to her as she spent more time in the Batture, which the crew affectionately called “Swamp Narnia.”

“Our film became a way to preserve and to honor and to speak on those values in a way that could be a lasting archive,” Kern said. “We really wanted to make something that could really withstand the rest of time and be a visual and audio archive of this community and this way of life that will probably not exist one day.”

Fry and Cote emerged as the documentary’s central subjects because of their unique philosophies regarding fear, peace and living on the edge. Their personal stories — Fry is an author who has chronicled the Batture’s history and the struggle against development, while Cote is an artist who recently lost his wife and is developing a closer relationship with God — embody the film’s central themes of loss, freedom, hope and resilience.

“Some Kind of Refuge” is a meditation on fear as the enemy of living, as told through the residents’ experiences, while also reflecting on how nature shapes life in the Batture and what it means to live with yourself.

With a short, 16-minute runtime, there was a lot left on the cutting room floor. Cadarette said the team tried to treat “Some Kind of Refuge” like an American poem by taking an intentional, intimate approach with each shot and sound bite. 

Kern said she wanted audiences to see themselves in the characters and question, “How do I want to live my life?” and wonder what it means to be a good neighbor and to experience reciprocity with the land. To her, the film is for younger generations searching for a deeper connection to nature and themselves. 

“I think that was a big thing that we wanted audiences to walk away with is how can people sort of see themselves, whether it’s an environment like this, or on their own; How can they find an inner refuge, no matter really, what’s happening around them,” Kern said. 

For her, making the film revealed that the simplest lessons matter the most.

“The Batture folks teach us an authentic way to be, one that rests not on material possessions but on genuine fulfillment that comes from self-actualization, surrender and the positive impact you have on your community,” she said. 

Short Film Program 3 in-person screenings

• 9:15 p.m., Jan. 28, Broadway Centre Cinemas, Salt Lake City
• 6:15 p.m., Feb. 1, Holiday Village Cinemas

Online

• 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1

The post Sundance short documentary explores nature, fear and finding ‘Some Kind of Refuge’ appeared first on Park Record.