Just two months after Sundance founder Robert Redford‘s death at the age of 89, the festival has revealed more details of its plans to honor the Oscar winner during its last year in Park City, Utah.
The festival’s traditional opening weekend soiree has been repurposed as Celebrating Sundance Institute: A Tribute to Founder Robert Redford. As a part of that January 23, 2026 hot ticket event, the very first Robert Redford Luminary Award will be rolled out and given to Ed Harris and Gyula Gazdag.
Ed Harris, left, and Gyula Gazda
Getty Images
The newly mintled Luminary Award “recognizes and celebrates individuals who have, in a visionary way, used their resources, insights, and reach to create possibility where there wasn’t, thus doing their part to make the world a better place,” declares Sundance.
To that, Amanda Kelso, Acting CEO of Sundance Institute said today: “We are pleased to introduce the Robert Redford Luminary Award to Ed Harris and Gyula Gazdag, who have played crucial roles in the Sundance Institute labs for over two decades and strongly exemplify the mission that Mr. Redford set for the organization. By dedicating their time to mentoring artists and collaborating with the fellows who have come through the labs, they have been influential in the development of generations of filmmakers. We are proud to continue this important work with them.”
“I’ve fortunately been asked to take part in the lab as an advisor for the past 19 years,” Apollo 13 star Harris said Wednesday. “Those weeks have been at the top of the list of the most rewarding, fulfilling, invaluable experiences of my life.” UCLA professor emeritus and film mentor Gazdag noted: “Becoming part of the Sundance Institute family is one of the best things that ever happened to me. This award, bearing Robert Redford’s name, to whom I am eternally grateful for what he created, is a great honor for me. It is extremely precious, since it is coming from the place that I cherish and admire.”
The Redford Tribute gathering will be held at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley, with Beehive State donors, politicians, Sundance alum, board members past and present such as Amy Redford, luminaries” and filmmakers from the current festival in attendance. The final guest list is still taking shape, but some very big names from SFF’s biggest and most acclaimed cinema successes are expected to be at the January 23 Redford tribute, I hear. So, get your indie film bingo cards out.
The Sundance Egyptian Theater on Main Street in Park City, Utah, displays messages honoring late actor Robert Redford on September 16, 2025, the day he died (Photo by GEORGE FREY/AFP via Getty Images)
One year before the festival packs up and moves its home base to Boulder, CO for Sundance 2027 and subsequent SFFs, the final Sundance in Park City aims to fill its the January 22–February 1 schedule with a multi-screening look back over the decades as well as showing new films across various genres. As we reported on October 21 in a chat with Sundance Festival Director Eugene Hernandez, along with a series of celebrations of the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid star in Park City and Salt Lake City, SFF will have a special screening of Redford’s 1969 ski movie Downhill Race.
BTW – for those of you who can’t make it to Park City in January for the last Sundance in the upmarket resort town, or find the prices for lodging, etc too steep, organizers are once again offering what they call an “at-home program.”
First significantly introduced during the pandemic, many of the films and schedule of SFF ’26 will available online from January 29–February 1, 2026, for film fans to see – which is kinda keeping in step with the access to art philosophy of Robert Redford, a fitting tribute of a different sort.
