The most important movie in Sundance history, according to Robert Redford
When Robert Redford died in 2025 at the grand old age of 89, the movie world shared in a collective grief over the loss of a man who had done so much for so long
From his days as a heartthrob in the 1960s and 1970s to his early directorial success in the 1980s to his role as an elder statesman right up to his death, he was simultaneously a link to the past and a valuable asset for the present. Meryl Streep put it best when she wrote, “One of the lions has passed”.
Perhaps the one thing that will define Redford’s legacy more than anything else is the Sundance Film Festival, which began in 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival, before eventually taking on a name inspired by its co-founder’s character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
What began as a showcase for up-and-coming American filmmakers would expand into one of the most important events in the movie calendar, and today, it continues to champion independent and visionary filmmakers who might not have gotten a chance elsewhere to showcase their unique vision and be encouraged for it.
There was no guarantee that the festival would succeed, even with the backing of such a big star, and speaking to Moviemaker, Redford had once recalled how difficult it was during the early days of Sundance and how one movie in particular ensured its survival.
“In the beginning, I was told it wouldn’t work,” he said, “There was only one theatre on Main Street then, and we tried to get people in there. It was five or six years before we realised some success, and that was with Sex, Lies, and Videotape. That had a huge impact and, slowly but surely, we had a platform.”
Sex, Lies, and Videotape, often stylised in lower case, because it’s cool and indie, was Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 debut, and follows James Spader’s Graham Dalton, a man nursing a perverse habit of filming women speaking about their sexual fantasies. His strange hobby has a knock-on effect for his best friend John, played by Peter Gallagher, and his wife Ann, played by Andie MacDowell, whose already rocky marriage is destabilised even further. The film revolutionised independent cinema and turned Soderbergh into a legend of the underground scene.
The film played at Sundance early in its run, winning the festival’s first-ever ‘Audience Award’, a prize that would go on to be won by El Mariachi, Whiplash, Coda, and many more. The power of Sex, Lies, and Videotape and its appeal to movie lovers who were growing tired of the mainstream brought thousands of new eyes to the festival. Once Soderbergh was established as a disruptor, people saw Sundance as the place that nurtured his early talents, and it was off to the races.
The relationship between Redford, Soderbergh, and Sundance is one of beautiful symbiosis, wherein none of the individual entities would have been as successful, and everything about the prolific director embodies the spirit in which the festival was founded, making the cinematic landscape all the richer for uniting all three.
