Robert Redford daughter Amy recalls dad 'suspect of fame' at Sundance

by · UPI

PARK CITY, UTAH Feb. 1 (UPI) -- The Sundance Film Festival paid tribute to founder Robert Redford at the 2026 festival. Slides featuring quotes from Redford circulated on screen before films, and a video of Redford speaking about Sundance played before every screening.

For a Redford film to play, the festival chose Downhill Racer, a 1969 film released over a decade before the festival began. The skiing drama was a film Redford was proud of and spoke about with festival filmmakers every year as an example of a film he believed in, even though the industry and public did not respond.

Redford's daughter, Amy, spoke before and after the screening. Characters like skier David Chappellett, who bristles with his coach (Gene Hackman) and love interest (Camilla Sparv), showed his resistance to Hollywood heartthrob archetypes, she said.

"I think he was suspect of fame from the beginning," Amy, 55, said at the screening. "He grew up in Los Angeles. He got to see the front row of the smoke and mirrors. He saw what it would do to people."

Part of Robert Redford's foundation of the Sundance Institute for independent filmmakers and the festival was to support the kind of stories Hollywood did not want to tell.

"I think part of his drive to support writers and filmmakers who were interested in investigating complex characters was so that the young him might be able to have the opportunity to do that," she said. "I think he wanted that for somebody who would've been coming up the ranks."

The sport in Downhill Racer was a metaphor for his work ethic too, she said. Though professional skiers performed the more challenging scenes, Robert Redford did learn basic skiing for the film.

"He really appreciated not only athleticism but being a good sport," she said. "The athleticism to him had to do with humility. When you're an athlete, it doesn't matter if somebody just took your picture. It's really about how you perform and how you train and what is your rigor?"

Amy Redford said her father, who died in September, cherished communion with audiences watching movies at the festival. She added that communing with art combated cynicism in difficult times.

"My dad said cynicism is the beginning of death, so let's defy death in all ways and keep coming back and keep creating and keep loving each other," she said.

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