At 40, the Sundance Film Festival celebrates its past and looks to the future

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck remember the feeling of being the new kids at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004, they’d come to Park City, Utah, armed with a short film “Gowanus, Brooklyn,” some homemade promotional postcards and dreams of breaking through. Their short not only won a prize that year but also enough support to make the feature version, “Half Nelson,” which would later earn Ryan Gosling his first Oscar nomination.

“I remember being like, oh my God, this festival has been around 20 years, it’s such an old festival,” Boden said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “Now it’s 20 years later and we’re the old people.”

Of course, “old” is relative when it comes to a discovery festival like Sundance, where directors fresh out of film school can get a shot at a breakthrough. Remember, Kevin Smith was just 23 when he brough “Clerks” to Park City. Like many of their contemporaries that started at Sundance — including Steven Soderbergh, who is also coming with a new film, “Presence” — Boden and Fleck have gone on to bigger projects, including “Captain Marvel.”

But the Sundance romance hasn’t dulled.