Between the Los Angeles fires and Donald Trump, the Sundance festival opens with a bubble of resistance and resilience

“Can we do even more Sundance than this?”exclaimed Thursday evening its artistic director Eugene Hernandez. The 2025 edition of the festival started with a small technical bug causing sound cuts during the presentation video just as the face of its founder Robert Redford appeared on the screen. For ten days, the former mining town of Park City, converted into a ski resort, is transformed into a branch of Hollywood welcoming young shoots of American independent cinema, as well as established stars, delighted to abandon big productions for more intimate stories .

While the fires are still ravaging the surroundings of Los Angeles and Donald Trump has once again become a tenant of the White House, Sundance appears as a timeless bubble of resilience and resistance. Twinless et Jimpatwo films featuring queer heroes, kicked off the festivities on Friday. And this, at the very moment when Donald Trump is dismantling his DEI departments in charge of diversity, equity and inclusion within his administration and decrees that only “two sexes, male and female” will now be recognized by civil status.

“Hate is in the air”

Eccentric comedy about grief flirting with psychological thriller, Twinless by James Sweeney features Dennis (Sweeney) and Roman (Dylan O’Brien). These two meet at a support group for twins who have lost their alter egos and form a close friendship. They all oppose each other. A skinny graphic designer, Dennis is gay, anxious and a hopeless romantic. Unemployed and still living with his mother, Roman is heterosexual and prone to fights, having resigned himself for years to being the bad twin. The one who never succeeded in school or in life unlike the sophisticated and late Rocky with whom the complicity had eroded. What Roman doesn’t know is that his meeting with Dennis owes nothing to chance. Rocky’s short-lived lover, Dennis projects all his feelings onto Roman and harbors a boundless obsession towards him. Bon mots, mischief, graphic antics… the 1,200 spectators at the Eccles amphitheater laughed out loud at this eccentric fable.

Jimpa by Sophie Hyde (My appointments with Leo), who is inspired by her family history and her father’s journey, drew more on pure emotion. A filmmaker, played by British star Olivia Colman, goes to Amsterdam with her non-binary child – who does not identify with any gender – played by Aud Mason-Hyde, child of the director, to see his grandfather , played by John Lithgow. A historical activist for the homosexual cause, he looks at the new LGBTQ generation with its different struggles and vocabulary, as admiringly as it is annoyed. “It is extremely important to open Sundance with a film overflowing with love and kindness encouraging tolerance while hate is in the air”underlined, to a round of applause, John Lithgow, in an obvious allusion to current events.

If after consulting its participants – some of whom are now homeless – Sundance decided to continue, the Los Angeles fires were on the minds. Eugene Hernandez confided to having heard a number of“harrowing stories of people fleeing their homes with hard drives under their arms” to save their films. The feature film Didn’t Die by Meera Menon about zombies who survive an apocalypse was filmed at the director’s and production’s now-destroyed homes in Altadena. “In our discussions, we kept coming up with the desire to find Sundance a moment of relief and healing and to reconnect with our community”underlines Eugene Hernandez.

Park City’s days are numbered

In Park City there seems to be a mentality of «business as usual». There is even snowfall. Masterclasses, evenings, charity galas and snack time cocktails to encourage exchanges are in full swing in the city and in the heights of the recently inaugurated Grand Hyatt Deer Valley. Friday evening, actress Cynthia Erivo and director James Mangold, freshly nominated for the Oscars for Wicked, were honored there. Podcast company Audible and Apple also hosted events. The interview studios set up downtown on Main Street by partner media (Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times), an obligatory stop for actors and directors visiting Sundance, was always full while motorists waited patiently in endless traffic jams following the opening of a large part of the main street to pedestrian traffic.

In Park City, the crowds that Sundance generates don’t just make people happy. The infrastructure of this town of 8,000 inhabitants has difficulty absorbing the professionals and movie buffs who converge by the thousands during the height of the winter sports season. Already under pressure due to restructuring and economic contraction hitting the cinema industry, Sundance, which is a costly adventure for those who go there, is considering its future. The time when studios and platforms were pulling out their checkbooks to acquire selected works is over. The festival will abandon its historic stronghold of Park City in 2027. Three more easily accessible cities have applied to host it: Boulder (Colorado), Cincinnati (Ohio) and neighboring Salt Lake City (Utah). Response in spring.