> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.readfoxtalk.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # FoxTalk convenes Sundance Institute executives and Colorado student press ahead of historic Boulder debut - URL: https://www.readfoxtalk.com/foxtalk-convenes-sundance-institute-executives-and-colorado-student-press-ahead-of-historic-boulder-debut/ - Published: 2026-09-30T21:37:54.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-01T18:25:16.000Z - Description: In an on-the-record press conference organized by FoxTalk, Sundance Film Festival Director Eugene Hernandez and Sundance Institute Managing Director Paula DuPré Pesmen briefed reporters from five Colorado college newsrooms months before the Festival opens its first edition in its new permanent home. - Author: FoxTalk Sundance Film Festival Director Eugene Hernandez and Sundance Institute Managing Director Paula DuPré Pesmen joined the Sept. 30 virtual session to discuss what the Sundance Film Festival intends to preserve from Park City, what will change in Colorado and what is still unfinished before the Festival begins Jan. 21. FoxTalk brought together reporters from five Colorado college newsrooms for the conversation, giving student journalists direct access to Sundance Institute leadership while the first Boulder Festival is still being built. Hernandez made clear that he did not see the session as a one-off appearance. Hernandez credited FoxTalk editor Andy Green’s framing of the session. “I appreciate Andy’s framing of not just waiting until festival week,” he said near the start of the conversation. He told the reporters the Institute wanted to hear what they were interested in, help them understand the transition and continue talking in the months ahead. Hernandez said he looked forward to students “building and developing that long-term relationship” with the Institute. That relationship is beginning at an unusual moment. The 2027 Sundance Film Festival will be the first Festival held in Colorado and the start of its new Boulder era after decades associated with Park City. And Hernandez said the Festival is not simply relocating the same event. “We’re building a new Festival in Boulder,” he said. ## More than 15,000 films, one new Festival Hernandez said Festival programmers are already watching more than 15,000 submissions as they work toward a program of more than 150 films for January. The selection process, he said, is one of the things that will remain fundamentally familiar. The Festival will continue looking for emerging independent filmmakers, including first- and second-time directors, alongside returning alumni. “What moves with us is the vision and the values and the history and legacy of our Institute,” Hernandez said. The physical Festival, however, will look different. Instead of the more dispersed geography the Festival used in Utah, organizers are building a concentrated Boulder footprint around Pearl Street, CU Boulder and nearby venues. Hernandez said he wants the Festival to radiate outward from a central gathering place. DuPré Pesmen described the effect more bluntly. “I always imagine we’re scooping the whole Festival into one location now,” she said. Most venues will be within walking distance, she said, while transportation will connect farther locations, including Chautauqua. The smaller footprint could change something less obvious than travel time: how often filmmakers, audiences, journalists and industry professionals run into each other. Hernandez repeatedly returned to one word throughout the conversation: community. He described the Festival not only as a place to watch films, but as a place where conversations in lines, coffee shops, theaters and buses can turn into professional relationships. He knows that firsthand. Hernandez told the students that one person he met on a Festival shuttle in the 1990s later became his business partner at IndieWire. ## Festival leaders say it is not an industry-only event One of the clearest messages from the session was directed at people who assume the Sundance Film Festival is inaccessible without industry connections. “It’s not a private industry event,” Hernandez said. He described the Festival as serving filmmakers, distributors, programmers, volunteers, longtime attendees, local audiences and people encountering the Festival for the first time. Then he spoke directly to the college reporters. “This is a Festival for students,” Hernandez said. “This is a Festival for folks who are aspiring or are already journalists.” He encouraged students to begin a relationship with the Festival in its first Colorado year even if they can attend only briefly. “You won’t be in college forever,” Hernandez said. The people students meet and the relationship they develop with the Festival, he said, can continue well beyond graduation. For students, DuPré Pesmen also disclosed a concrete new access point: the Festival plans to offer student press tickets. “We want it to be more accessible for students,” she said. That announcement came during the newsroom question period, when reporters asked Sundance Institute leaders about everything from film careers to whether the Festival would remain open to ordinary audiences. ## A statewide student press room The FoxTalk-organized session brought together student journalists representing five Colorado universities: Colorado State University’s *Rocky Mountain Collegian*, the University of Colorado Boulder’s *CU Independent*, Metropolitan State University of Denver’s *The Metropolitan*, the University of Colorado Denver’s *The Sentry* and the University of Northern Colorado’s *The Mirror*. Their questions pushed the conversation beyond the mechanics of moving a festival. Andrew Hyman from The Sentry asked how film students should make the most of the Festival if they hope to enter the industry. Hernandez recommended volunteering, but said students should not focus only on the established people on stages. Some of the most important people they meet, he said, could be peers sitting beside them in a theater, waiting in line or riding a Festival bus. “You find those people that you connect with and then you stay connected,” Hernandez said. Kaelyn Diep of The Metropolitan asked what aspiring filmmakers can learn from attending the Festival. DuPré Pesmen said students should listen closely to filmmakers describe how projects were financed, produced and distributed. “Making a film independently is hard,” she said. There is no single path, she said, which is exactly why hearing many filmmakers explain how they got a project made can be useful. Aries Touart of The Mirror asked Hernandez to name a film from the Festival that stayed with him. He chose John Cameron Mitchell’s *Hedwig and the Angry Inch*, recalling its path from a downtown New York performance to an off-Broadway production and eventually a Sundance Film Festival premiere. And when CU Independent reporter Melodie Miller asked whether the Festival might create a dedicated space for Colorado students to meet visiting filmmakers and industry figures, Hernandez pointed to a broader ecosystem still forming around the Festival. He said Colorado organizations, universities, nonprofits and other partners were considering programming and gathering spaces around the Festival’s official footprint. “There are groups that are specifically Colorado-based that are thinking about ways in which to activate … within the Festival,” Hernandez said. ## The Boulder Festival is still being built For all the excitement around the move, Sundance Institute leaders were also candid about what is not finished. DuPré Pesmen said the Institute is still finalizing major operational details and coordinating with CU Boulder, the city, Downtown Boulder, Visit Boulder, the Chamber and other partners. “It’s really finalizing and communicating and tying everything together,” she said. Transportation is one example. She said the Institute was still finalizing plans for service to Chautauqua and other locations outside the central Festival footprint, even as much of the Festival footprint is expected to be walkable. Lodging will extend beyond Boulder as well. DuPré Pesmen pointed to hotel options in Boulder and Denver and noted that visitors staying near Denver Union Station could use regional transportation to reach Boulder. ## Sundance Institute communications briefs student journalists The application window is open through Oct. 22, the team said. Student journalists were told to request an application through [**presscredentials@sundance.org**](mailto:presscredentials@sundance.org). Credentials are issued to individual journalists rather than issued once to an entire newsroom. The application asks for an assignment letter from an editor, expected attendance dates, coverage plans, examples of previous work and other information that helps the Institute understand what the reporter intends to do. Asked by FoxTalk what makes a student application strongest, Sundance Institute communications staff emphasized specificity: what the reporter wants to cover, what kind of work they plan to produce and what they expect to publish while the Festival is underway. The team also cautioned that a press credential does not automatically guarantee access to every public screening. Press-and-industry screenings are a major route for journalists to see films, and the Institute said it expects to publish a film public-relations contact list closer to January so reporters can identify the publicist handling each project and pursue interviews or press-line access. **Correction (Oct. 1, 2026):** An earlier version of this article listed the Denver Clarion among the newsrooms represented at the Sept. 30 press conference. The Clarion had agreed to participate but did not ultimately attend. Reporters from five Colorado college newsrooms participated.