The Sundance Film Festival will return to Park City for 2022, setting Jan. 20-30 as the dates for next year’s in-person event.
But next year’s Sundance will also remain online after the festival saw record attendance at the 2021 edition, with more than 600,000 people attending the virtual fest. Sundance had additional success this year with events taking place in other hub cities across the country, and the 2022 festival will continue that aspect beyond the in-person events in Park City, Utah.
“We are in the process of designing a safe and accessible Festival where our audiences and artists can come together to celebrate and discover new work, and each other,” Sundance said in a statement.
2021’s festival was slimmed down to just 73 films — compared to its usual slate of 120 — and was only seven days long, though it will return to its usual 11-day run for 2022. It’s unclear how other changes will affect the lineup.
In February, the Sundance Institute said the seven-day festival reached a total audience of 2.7 times (168%) more than the typical 11-day version in Utah in 2020 and was viewed in 50 states and 120 countries. Specifically, Sundance said there were 251,331 views of feature and short films and Indie Series through the festival’s online platform or TV apps. The festival then counted an estimated two people per household watching its films, reaching an estimated half-million people.
Additionally, Sundance estimated 20,000 people attended its drive-in screenings and socially distanced indoor and outdoor screenings (assuming 2.5 attendees per car ticket) across the 40 satellite screens run by 20 different partner cinemas and organizations in 2021.
