Sundance narrows potential new locations down to Colorado, Utah, or… Ohio

The little beauty pageant running right now in select American cities, as they do their best to woo eligible movie festival bachelor/ette the Sundance Film Festival, has now reached what seem to be its terminal stages. Per Variety, the Sundance Institute has announced its shortlist of three places that could become the event’s next home, with Cincinnati, Ohio; Boulder, Colorado; and its current home in Utah all still in contention.

If we’re being honest, Ohio feels like the outlier here; we were reasonably sure half the reason Sundance was in Utah in the first place was to give Hollywood types a yearly excuse for a ski holiday, but hey, maybe there’s a strong undercurrent of studio bigwigs and A-listers who are just really into ruining chili with extraneous spices. (The Sundance folks, meanwhile, highlighted the city’s “focus on independent filmmakers, a thriving arts community and investment in arts and culture.”)

Boulder, meanwhile, offers its “large concentration of artists in the area, a history of social movements, a welcoming environment, commitment to sustainability and the city’s Racial Equity Plan”—as well, we assume, as an opportunity to finally use those high-altitude baking instructions you’ve been seeing on stuff in your pantry for your entire life. And Utah offers 40 years of familiarity, even if the plan, if the festival is going to stay in the state, will be to move most of the festival’s activities to Salt Lake City, which is cheaper to get to, and only hold certain events in its traditional home of Park City.

All of this is, of course, academic for the next two years: The 2025 and 2026 versions of Sundance are already slated for Park City/Salt Lake, per existing contracts. Come 2027, though, and the people of Cincinnati might find themselves under pressure to get some fake ski slopes built pretty damn quick.