“Our family, we have a word we say when we are in the middle of being scared and excited — it’s scited,” said Abby Wambach, the two-time Olympic gold medal winning soccer player. “That’s me right now: scited.”
It was Friday night, the first full day of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and celebrities and filmmakers were packed into a luxury hotel ballroom in sweaters and snow boots for a gala, which raised $1.5 million for the Sundance Institute, the nonprofit founded by the actor Robert Redford that supports independent artists.
The 450-person event took place in the vast ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley, a new hotel at one of the bases of the Deer Valley ski resort, where lift tickets cost about $300 a day and snowboarding is still prohibited.
The Sundance Institute proceeded with the festival amid wildfires in Southern California, which have affected many in the entertainment industry and beyond, to bring its community together, organizers said.
“What gets us through, and moving forward, is the art form and the ability to tell these stories,” said Ebs Burnough, the chair of the board of trustees for the Sundance Institute, when asked if he felt uncomfortable about holding the festival this year.
“Not every story is light and easy, but we have to tell them,” he said. “This is what storytellers do.”
The Sundance Film Festival, held nearby in Park City for more than 40 years, is credited with catapulting the careers of once-unknown talent, including Quentin Tarantino, Kristen Stewart and Christopher Nolan, and is now full of recognizable faces presenting big new projects while clomping in the snow and networking on Main Street.
Ms. Wambach was in Utah for the premiere of “Come See Me in the Good Light,” a documentary directed by Ryan White about two lovers who explore love and morality after receiving an incurable diagnosis. Ms. Wambach and her wife, the author Glennon Doyle, are executive producers on the film.
“It’s my first Sundance, and it’s my first time being part of a film,” Ms. Wambach said. “This is so exciting to be a rookie.”
The actor Jon Hamm, who was starring in “The Big Fix” a new audio drama from Audible about corruption in 1950s Los Angeles, was surrounded by gala attendees shaking his hand and asking for photos.
He said he had difficulty recognizing people covered in winter gear.
“Everybody isn’t in tuxedos here,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Do I know you?’ They have hats on, so I can’t tell.”
Cynthia Erivo, who was wearing a wrap dress and big, clunky silver earrings, arrived encircled by an entourage. She had just been nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her role in “Wicked,” and was coming off a whirlwind day of media appointments and events.
“We all love coming to Sundance because there are more indie, more off-the-wall ideas,” she said. “There is no pretense. You don’t have to dress up too much if you don’t want to. You just get to be cozy and see really good films.”
The festival, which opened just days after Donald J. Trump was inaugurated for a second term, has a slate this year infused with politics.
The actress Glenn Close was on the Sundance board for nearly 20 years and was thinking about current events. (She also played JD Vance’s mother in “Hillbilly Elegy,” the 2020 film based on the vice president’s memoirs.)
“There is so much discord and darkness in the world,” she said. “We have to be reminded of what it means to be human beings. Art has the ability to inspire, and we need that.”
She was at the gala to give a tribute to her friend Michelle Satter, the founding senior director of artist programs at Sundance Institute.
Around 8 p.m., guests sat down for a dinner of bronzed salmon and speeches reflecting on the impact of the Sundance Institute.
The actress Olivia Colman, whose film “Jimpa,” about a mother taking a nonbinary teen to visit their gay grandfather, premiered Thursday at a packed Eccles Theatre, took the stage to give Ms. Erivo the Visionary Award.
Ms. Colman, wearing face glitter and a costume tiara, lauded Ms. Erivo, “as a human, and as an actor, or as a singer, or activist, and ally, and a fashion icon, and as a frankly mind-bending practitioner of a whole load of gym exercises I can’t even name.”
Ms. Erivo walked on stage to a round of applause before putting the tiara on her own head. “It can’t be left here,” she said. “It must be worn.”
Throughout the program, audience members speculated on the festival’s future following the announcement by organizers about plans to move to a new location in 2027, which could include Cincinnati, Boulder, Colo., or Salt Lake City, with ancillary screenings in Park City.
“There is tons of traffic, it’s really hard to get around, it’s really hard to get housing, it’s expensive,” explained Amanda Kelso, the chief executive of the Sundance Institute.
“We love Park City, we love the community, but we also acknowledge that we need to think, ‘How are we going to be sustainable for the next 40 years?” Ms. Kelso said.
Mr. Hamm said if the festival moved it should adopt a new name: “I think that’s the only fair way to honor this and honor what the new thing will be.”
But if Cincinnati is selected, he joked, “we can water ski on the river.”
