The first Sundance Film Festival since the death of founder Robert Redford begins in Park City Thursday — the final time it will be held in the mountains of Utah.Hollywood A-listers Olivia Wilde, Natalie Portman and Ethan Hawke are expected to walk the red carpet at the snowcapped Rocky Mountain resort, along with a host of lesser-known filmmakers at one of the most important gatherings in the global movie calendar.Amy Redford, daughter of the “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” star who created the festival in 1978, said this year’s get-together would be an emotional experience, just four months after her father’s death.”Very proud,” she said, when asked how she felt about her father’s legacy.”He was somebody that created from the field, not from on high,” she told AFP.”He never meant to be the center of focus for this whole organization. The center of focus was always the storytellers.”- Line-up -Among the dozens of feature-length films and documentaries on show over the coming days will be “The Invite” directed by and starring Wilde, opposite Seth Rogen and Edward Norton.The script, co-written by Rashida Jones (“Parks and Recreation”), deals with a couple whose mysterious neighbors come over for dinner.”Mad Men” stars Jon Hamm and John Slattery reunite in “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” where a Midwestern bride-to-be rampages through Hollywood in an effort to even the score after her fiance uses the couple’s “free celebrity pass” on his famous crush.In “The Gallerist” — starring Oscar winners Natalie Portman and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, along with Jenna Ortega and Sterling K. Brown — a desperate curator tries to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami.Among the most hotly anticipated non-celebrity films premiering at the festival is “The History of Concrete,” a sideways look by John Wilson about how to sell a film about building materials.A strong international lineup includes director Molly Manners debut feature “Extra Geography” from the UK and queer genre film “Leviticus” from Australia.”Hanging by a Wire” tells the story of the nail-biting race to save schoolboys dangling from a stranded cable car in the Himalayan foothills.”Hold On to Me” from Cyprus traces the efforts of an 11-year-old tracking down her estranged father, while documentary “Kikuyu Land” from Kenya examines how powerful outside forces use local corruption to dispossess a people.All of them will offer something special, Amy Redford said.”I think the look on the faces of people that premiere their films and realize they’re looking out into an audience who understand what they were trying to say…it always just is kind of a stunning experience,” she said.- Moving on -The festival moves next year to Boulder, Colorado, having outgrown its current host city.For festival programmer John Nein, who has been at every edition since 1996, leaving Park City will be bittersweet.”It’s a special place,” he told AFP.”It’s a place that has been so tied to how the festival works in terms of people coming to this place. It’s not particularly convenient. It’s really cold.””But in a weird way, that’s what brings people here and it’s what creates the audience that we have here. So I feel like that’s part of what made it special.”Festival director Eugene Hernandez said the Sundance Institute will continue to have roots in Utah, even as the festival moves to Colorado.But this year’s program will be one to remember.”There’s going to be a lot of laughter, there will probably also be some tears, there will be joy, there will be connection, there will be community,” he said.”I think those are all aspects that make a festival.”

Venezuela’s interim president will soon visit the United States, a senior US official said Wednesday, further signaling President Donald Trump’s willingness to embrace the oil-rich country’s new leader. Delcy Rodriguez would be the first sitting Venezuelan president to visit the United States in more than a quarter century — aside from presidents attending United Nations meetings in New York. She said Wednesday that she approached any dialogue with the United States “without fear.””We are in a process of dialogue, of working with the United States, without any fear, to confront our differences and difficulties…and to address them through diplomacy,” said Rodriguez.The invitation reflects a head-snapping shift in relations between Washington and Caracas since US Delta Force operatives swooped into Caracas, seized president Nicolas Maduro and spirited him to a US jail to face narcotrafficking charges. Rodriguez was a former vice president and long-time insider in Venezuela’s authoritarian and anti-American government, before changing tack as interim president.She is still the subject of US sanctions, including an asset freeze.Rodriguez on Wednesday began reorganizing the leadership of the country’s military forces, appointing 12 senior officers to regional commands.As a flotilla of US warships remains off the Venezuelan coast, she has allowed the United States to broker the sale of Venezuelan oil, facilitated foreign investment and released dozens of political prisoners. A senior White House official said Rodriguez would visit soon, but no date has been set. – All for oil -The last bilateral visit by a sitting Venezuelan president came in the 1990s — before populist leader Hugo Chavez took power. Since then, successive Venezuelan governments have made a point of thumbing their nose at Washington and building close ties with US foes in China, Cuba, Iran and Russia.The US trip, which has yet to be confirmed by Venezuelan authorities, could pose problems for Rodriguez inside the government — where some hardliners still detest what they see as Washington’s hemispheric imperialism.Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez remain powerful forces in the country, and analysts say their support for Rodriguez is not a given. Cabello on his weekly state television program Wednesday night denied reports he had met with US officials ahead of Maduro’s ouster.”It’s a campaign. They say, ‘Diosdado met with the United States’…I haven’t met with anyone,” he said.Trump has so far appeared happy to allow Rodriguez and much of the repressive government to remain in power, so long as the United States has access to Venezuelan oil — the largest proven reserves in the world. Trump hosted Venezuela’s exiled opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado at the White House earlier this month. After initially dismissing Machado and her ability to control the country’s powerful armed forces and intelligence services, he said Tuesday that he would “love” to have her “involved in some way.” Machado’s party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections that Washington said were stolen by Maduro. Analysts say Trump’s embrace of Rodriguez and avoidance of wholesale regime change can be explained by an unwillingness to repeat mistakes made in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. “Those kinds of intervention operations — and the deployment of troops for stabilization — have always ended very badly,” said Benigno Alarcon, a politics expert at the Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas. Trump’s stance has however angered democracy activists who argue that all political prisoners must be freed and granted amnesty, and Venezuela must hold fresh elections.

US President Donald Trump will show off his new “Board of Peace” and meet Ukraine’s leader at Davos on Thursday — burnishing his claim to be a peacemaker a day after backing off his own threats against Greenland.Trump abruptly announced on Wednesday that he was scrapping tariffs against Europe and ruling out military action to take Greenland from Denmark, partially defusing a crisis which has shaken the meeting of global elites.On his second day at the Swiss ski resort, Trump will seek to promote the  “Board of Peace”, his controversial body for resolving international conflicts, with a signing ceremony for the organisation’s charter.The fledgling board boasts a $1 billion price tag for permanent membership and Trump has invited leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Hungary’s Viktor Orban to join.”I think it’s the greatest board ever formed,” Trump said Wednesday as he met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, another of the leaders who have agreed to join.The launch of the board comes against the backdrop of Trump’s frustration at having failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize, despite his disputed claim to have ended eight conflicts.Originally meant to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza after the war between Hamas and Israel, the board’s charter does not limit its role to the Strip and has sparked concerns that Trump wants it to rival the United Nations.Key US allies including France and Britain have expressed skepticism but others have signed up, particularly in the Middle East where Trump-friendly Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have agreed to join.About 35 world leaders have committed so far out of the 50 or so invitations that went out, a senior Trump administration official told reporters on Wednesday.Trump also said on Wednesday that Putin had agreed to join — despite the Kremlin so far saying it was still studying the invite.- ‘Framework of a future deal’ -The inclusion of Russian president Putin has caused particular concern among US allies, but especially in Ukraine as it seeks an end to Moscow’s nearly four-year-old invasion.Trump said he was due to hold talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after the “Board of Peace” meeting as difficult negotiations for a ceasefire in the Ukraine war continue.At Davos on Wednesday, Trump said Russia and Ukraine would be “stupid” not to reach a peace deal in the conflict that he said he could solve within a day of taking office a year ago.Trump repeated his oft-stated belief that Putin and Zelensky were close to a deal, although he has veered between blaming one or the other for the lack of a ceasefire so far.”I believe they’re at a point now where they can come together and get a deal done. And if they don’t, they’re stupid — that goes for both of them,” said the US president.Trump has long been a skeptic of US support for Ukraine and says that it is now up to NATO and Europe to back Kyiv. But his belief that he has a personal connection with Putin has not brought an end to the war so far.The US leader’s roving special envoy, businessman Steve Witkoff, is set to travel to Moscow from Davos with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and hold talks with Putin on Thursday.Zelensky has meanwhile voiced fears that Trump’s push to seize Greenland could divert focus away from Russia’s invasion of his country.Trump however said late Wednesday he had reached a “framework of a future deal” after meeting NATO chief Mark Rutte, and that he would therefore waive tariffs scheduled to hit European allies on February 1.Rutte told AFP in Davos that the meeting had been “very good” but that there was “still a lot of work to be done” on Greenland. Trump insists the mineral-rich Arctic island is vital for US and NATO security against Russia and China.

A US jury on Wednesday acquitted the former school police officer for his response to a 2022 mass shooting at a Texas elementary school which killed 21 people, including 19 children — the the frustration of the victims’s families.Adrian Gonzales, 52, was accused of failing to “engage, distract or delay the shooter,” and faced 29 felony counts of child endangerment — one for each of the 19 children who died and for the 10 students who survived. The jury took several hours to deliberate.”In each of the 29 counts, we the jury find the defendant, Adrian Gonzales, not guilty,” Judge Sid Harle said as he read the verdict in a Corpus Christi courthouse, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Uvalde, where the shooting took place.Nineteen young children and two teachers were killed in the city of Uvalde on May 24, 2022 when a teenage gunman went on a rampage with an AR-15 style assault rifle at Robb Elementary School, in what was America’s deadliest school shooting in a decade.The official response by law enforcement was heavily criticized after it emerged that more than a dozen officers waited for over an hour outside classrooms where the shooting was taking place and did nothing as children lay dead or dying inside.Family members voiced frustration at the decision, which followed an uncommon attempt to hold law enforcement accountable for their response to a mass shooting. “They failed the children again,” Javier Cazares, the father of Jackie Cazares who was killed in the attack, told press. “I’ve been emotionally shattered since day one, but again, we had to brace for the worst.”A total of 376 officers — border guards, state police, city police, local sheriff departments and elite forces — responded to the massacre, a Texas state lawmakers’ report said in July 2022.After the verdict was read, Gonzales thanked god and his attorneys, who insisted he did risk his life.The shooter, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was reportedly killed by law enforcement at the site of the attack.Former school district police chief Pete Arredondo also faces charges over the tragedy, but will be tried separately and has pleaded not guilty to the charges he faces.