Robert Redford loved storytellers.
It’s why he founded the Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival, and why he would ride his motorcycle up to the labs, often arriving a few minutes late to the sessions, to meet with writers, directors, advisors and more in a committed, decades-long effort to support stories and the people who tell them.
It was perfectly fitting then that Friday night’s Celebrating Sundance Institute: A Tribute to Founder Robert Redford featured more than a few notable names returning the favor and sharing stories of their own, often about the late Hollywood icon, the impact of what he created and the influence Sundance has had on their lives and careers. There were tears, cheers, a few standing ovations (for Michelle Satter and Amy Redford), a surprise performance by Patti LuPone, and a slew of awards presented during a nearly three-hour fundraiser held at Grand Hyatt Deer Valley in Park City, Utah.
“The name of the evening is Once Upon a Time,” declared Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke upon taking the stage to kick off the event and briefly getting choked up. “Once upon a time, there lived an extraordinary man who connected all of us in this room. We make up part of Sundance Institute. We make up the community, and we would not be here except for the love and appreciation that we all share for Robert Redford, for the great world that he brought and that he nurtured into being. Tonight we celebrate the true leader and I hope that we can all keep the fire that he’s starting burning in ourselves and burning out towards everybody else that we need as we go forward in our lives.”
The program was split into two parts — Act 1: The Vision and Act 2: The Legacy — and saw awards go to Hamnet filmmaker and lab alum Chloé Zhao, A Perfect Neighbor’s double Oscar nominee Geeta Gandbhir, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple filmmaker Nia DaCosta and veteran labs advisers Ed Harris and Gyula Gazdag with onstage appearances by David Lowery, Woody Harrelson, Ava DuVernay, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi and John Cooper. Guests in attendance included Ryan Coogler, Chris Pine, Rob Lowe, Boots Riley, Dan Lin, Jason Blum, Lynette Howell-Taylor and others.
Below are highlights of the awards.
Trailblazer Award presented by Google
Fresh from receiving eight Oscar nominations for Hamnet, Zhao touched down in Park City to accept a trailblazer honor, presented by her Sundance labs cohort David Lowery.
“A lot of you in the room know this, but each story we tell marks a step in a journey, and it’s not hard at all to trace Chloé’s journey right back to these mountains and to the Sundance labs, which is where we first met when she and I were both fellows of the screenwriting lab and way back in 2012, along with a host of incredible writers, directors, some of whom are in the room tonight,” detailed Lowery, who also revealed that they still share early drafts of screenplays and cuts of their films with one another.
In accepting, Zhao recalled feeling alone and unsure in her steps as she walked a trail until she was accepted into the Sundance screenwriters lab alongside aspiring filmmakers like Lowery, Ryan Coogler and Marielle Heller.
“I feel like being part of this community and also the experience of making Hamnet with everyone from Focus Features, my producing partners and my team, it taught me something very important, which is trailblazing or leadership, is not about dominance. It’s about interdependence and it’s about community,” she explained. “Community and relationships, to give but also learn to receive as a part of the ecosystem. I want to thank Robert Redford for knowing the importance of interdependence both in nature and in human nature. And for [Michelle Satter] and everyone in the Sundance labs and the entire filmmaking storytelling community. Because of all of you, I can now walk on my trail knowing that every step I take, I trust because I know I’m being moved by something bigger.”
Vanguard Award for Nonfiction Presented by Acura
DuVernay had the task of presenting a trophy to Gandbhir, but first she took a walk down memory lane to share a story about the Sundance founder. “When I think of Robert Redford, two things first come to mind,” she said, with the first one being how “slightly frustrated and annoyed” he got as she refused to call him by the name everyone else did, Bob. “He said, ‘Please, Ava, just call me Bob.’ Sure, Mr. Redford, sure. The other thing that comes to mind are doors. The doors he built. The doors he held open. The doors he allowed so many of us to walk through before we even understood what it meant to be a part of this industry.”
In accepting, The Perfect Neighbor filmmaker, who premiered the critically acclaimed and now Oscar-nominated documentary at Sundance in 2025, joked that like DuVernay, she has her own stack of Sundance rejection letters. “I like to think of them now as early signs of commitment on both sides,” she mused before praising Sundance as a place that uplifts storytellers and offers a home for bold, risk-taking projects. “Thank you for your faith in artists’ voices and reminding us that this work still matters. Thank you for creating a place where risk is not just tolerated but expected, and thank you for choosing artists over authoritarianism and for proving that culture doesn’t move forward while playing safe.”
Vanguard Award for Fiction Presented by Acura
Thompson had the honor of presenting a trophy to her Little Woods and Hedda collaborator DaCosta, whom she met at the Sundance lab while workshopping the filmmaker’s debut.
“From the first moment I met Nia, I understood that she was a real singular voice of her generation. Her ability to navigate the extraordinary highs and lows of the human condition across honor spaces to infuse her work with honesty, with humor, with irony, with poetry, and with beauty, is a sight to behold,” praised the actress and producer who revealed that DaCosta flew in from London and promptly insisted they go to a midnight showing of Buddy. Though they didn’t go to sleep until 3 a.m., they got up the next morning and made it to a doc screening of The Oldest Person in the World. “She has this ferocious appetite to be in conversation with story.”
DaCosta told some stories, too, recalling her time meeting Redford, how Sundance provided connections to representatives and a network of artists she calls family. Like DuVernay, she was initially uncomfortable calling Redford by his nickname. “He was a stunning human. He really saw you,” she said, noting how he would always stop and check in with fellows at the labs, whether on a pedestrian path or at the Owl Bar. “I remember once seeing him walk with some of the other fellows from the director’s lab, and he just looked so full of love and pride for us for what he’d built. And it was just very clear to me in that moment that the depth to which he cared about this place and all of us.”
She closed her comments by turning to fellow honoree Gazdag, a longtime lab adviser, who changed her life with a comment. “He said something very simple to me: He said, ‘You are a director.’ I thanked him and I went to the bathroom and cried from joy because I didn’t realize how badly I need to hear it. I wonder if I would be where I am today without that moment, but I know for sure I would not be here without Sundance.”
Inaugural Robert Redford Luminary Awards
Amy Redford and Satter teamed up to present the night’s final awards, a newly created honor that went to two longtime lab advisers, Harris and Gazdag. But first, Amy offered some reflections on her father. “There was no place that dad would rather be but sitting with a new filmmaker and not imposing some kind of oppressive answer, but asking critical questions,” she explained. “And I have always kind of flinched when people talk about his giving back because he never liked to look over his shoulder about anything because what he was really doing was giving forward. It was an investment in the future and the world that he wanted to live in.”
Both Harris and Gazdag invested decades in the labs, working with aspiring storytellers: Harris with writers and Gazdag with directors. For his part, Harris choked back tears as he called the weeks he spent every summer “among the most fulfilling, enlightening and inspirational days and weeks of my life. There’s nothing like it. It’s truly magical.”
He said he would wager that every single creative person who has been a part of the lab over the past 40 years has also had their lives enriched by the experience “at a time when lies have become commonplace, when diversity is condemned, when misogyny is applauded, when hate and intolerance are deemed virtuous.” Meanwhile, the lab’s support of independent storytelling “remains an oasis of artistic freedom, diversity, tolerance, imagination, hope and love. That was Bob’s vision. … I’m a lucky man to be a small part of it.”
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