Sundance on ICE: How the Spirit of Robert Redford Shined Through a Chilling Political Moment

“There’s no room in our society for discrimination. None. I think it’s un-American.”

In 2013, Robert Redford stood before a group of his fellow Utahns and urged them to lend their voices to an anti-discrimination proposal that would prevent gender identity and sexual orientation from being a factor in a citizen seeking housing or employment.

Praising “the power of collective action,” Redford expressed hope that their efforts could inspire change in other parts of the country. He ended his speech on a line from T.S. Eliot: “There is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” (The bill was passed 18 months later).

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Redford, among many things, was a pragmatist. He was well aware of the uphill battle to create systemic change, so he built an institution where ideas — the first step toward a solution — could take root. After dedicating a large part of his acting career to projects that spoke truth to power, he established the Sundance Film Festival to ensure future generations of creatives could be granted the same privilege he had been bestowed. In time, Sundance became the most influential film festival in the country.

Flash forward to the festival’s final days in Park City in 2026. The ski town, typically blanketed in snow, saw a much thinner cover — mirroring the slow erosion of Sundance’s scrappy indie spirit. With a lineup of films dominated by A-list talent, many of whom were celebrated at after-parties hosted inside corporate pop-ups branded by the likes of Audible and Chase Sapphire, Redford’s original vision for Sundance was almost unrecognizable.

To further stoke the flame, as corporations look to automate the creative process through AI, some indie filmmakers found themselves inadvertently accelerating their own displacement by mourning the premeditated death of their craft.

“Maybe stop saying how hard it is out there,” actor Peter Dinklage told Variety during the festival, calling on his fellow creatives to change their tone. “That just makes young filmmakers go, ‘Uh oh’ and not go with their guts. It’s all relative, but let’s not put up any walls.”

That sense of industry dread reflects a broader national anxiety, which reached a breaking point on Saturday, Jan. 24 (traditionally the buzziest day of the festival) following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis. How would Sundance respond?

Hollywood stars are often discouraged by the larger talent agencies and studios they partner with not to weigh in too directly on contested political issues (whether they listen or not is another thing). Plus, to address the elephant (or the donkey) in the room, not all Americans care to hear what “Hollywood elites” have to say about the atrocities of the world from the comfort of luxury. (During the festival, Bill Maher made headlines for saying celebrities need to “shut the f—k up” if they want the Democrats “to win elections”).

But at a turning point in American history, one where its people have grown sick of watching senseless violence carried out by those in power who took an oath to protect them, the film community — under the beam of Redford’s Sundance — appeared to take an unusually collective stance against tyranny.

By Saturday night, the political rhetoric became inescapable. Olivia Wilde and Natalie Portman turned heads for wearing “ICE Out” pins at the premieres of their films “I Want Your Sex” and “The Gallerist.” On the red carpet, Wilde took a bold stance during an interview with Variety, telling her fellow Americans to do everything they can to “cast ICE out and delegitimize this criminal organization.”

“It feels like the lid has blown off,” said Tatiana Maslany, reflecting on the outpouring of celebrities speaking out. “I think a lot of people are realizing for the first time that they can’t remove themselves from the people who this affects — because it affects everyone.”

From there, Variety heard from Giancarlo Esposito, who called for “a revolution” as the White House fuels a “feeling of civil war in the streets.” Will Poulter said it’s “really upsetting to see people forget we’re a country that we have immigrants to thank for.” Even the directors behind the very sweet “Little Miss Sunshine,” Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, took an opportunity during the film’s 20th anniversary to say they hope their film’s themes of “rejecting authority” will inspire audiences to “go out and be a little rebellious,” slyly referencing the protests that had broken out across the country. 

Sundance attendees and filmmakers joined the protests held in Park City on Sunday and Monday, a visual manifestation of festivalgoers’ craving to practice free speech at a time where its protection under the First Amendment feels endangered.

“I’ve never felt scared about what I was going to say — until the last couple of years,” Ethan Hawke said at “The Weight” premiere with a quiver in his voice. “There’s a fear in the air that I’ve never felt before. And it’s not America… Sometimes you need to have your freedoms taken away to know what they mean and what’s worth fighting for.”

The journalists covering the festival also found themselves affected. On Sunday, in the midst of sharing all these interviews on social media, Variety’s TikTok account was “shadowbanned” (an unofficial restriction in which the algorithm hides a user’s content for a period of time, often caused by a post that’s deemed as “restricted” content).

A number of other users reported being shadowbanned on TikTok for posting content criticizing ICE. Some attributed the sudden censorship to the app’s new leadership: TikTok owner ByteDance had just closed a deal to form TikTok U.S., a joint venture majority-owned by American investors to satisfy the nation’s divest-or-ban mandate.

In an email sent to Variety, a representative from Bytedance attributed the shadowban to “a technical issue impacting the U.S. user experience, which may cause delays in publishing new posts and going live.”

Just hours before news of the TikTok censorship went viral online, Border Control chief Greg Bovino connected the causation of Prezzi’s death to the anti-ICE rhetoric coming from journalists and Democrats.

“When someone chooses to listen to a politician, a so-called journalist, or a community leader that spouts that type of vilification towards law enforcement or anything else… there are consequences and actions there also,” he said. “I think we saw that yesterday.”

When Redford expressed disappointment with the world, he typically pointed his criticism toward the politicians tasked with creating change, not the American citizens who deserved to receive it.

In a 2018 blog post titled “A Brief Statement About Big Things,” Redford lamented that he felt “out of place in the country I was born into,” highlighting the stark divisiveness that had come to define American public life. He encouraged readers to “be better than our politicians,” to live in justice and respect, and to let others “fight it out now to the bitter ends.”

“This is our country too. Every woman, man, and child in it — our American future,” he concluded. “We’ve got work to do.”

Redford never promised that simply speaking up would change the world. Esposito recalls of his late friend, “Bob was subtler than that, he empowered people through his actions. He wasn’t interested in his ego to tell you how he felt about something because he knew better. He was interested in the process of independent film, how to nurture your voice. What does your voice tell you this should be? To me, that’s empowerment through action.”

Perhaps under the beam of Redford’s Sundance, while promoting independent films that shine a light on underrepresented issues and expand our collective empathy, the idea of speaking out became a little less daunting.

“Fascists go after artists because artists let you know that this world was built by people,” activist Jes Vesconte said during Park City’s anti-ICE protest on Monday. “It’s imaginary — and that means it can be imagined differently. We have the power to do things differently. And artists help us imagine that world. Journalists. Artists. Storytellers. Activists. All of us.”