But Sundance as we now know it kicked off exactly 25 years back, when a 26-year-old director named Steven Soderbergh brought his first film, Sex, Lies and Videotape, to Park City, Utah. It was a drab little ski resort and former mining town, and the festival was a somewhat sleepy affair. But Soderbergh’s film was the talk of Sundance that year: it won the audience award, got snapped up by the Weinstein brothers and four months later won the Palme d’Or in Cannes. All of a sudden, Sundance was hip, cool, edgy and a place where reputations could be made.