LOS ANGELES: The annual Sundance Film Festival opens Thursday in the Utah mountains with its usual selection of quirky, independent movies — and its iconic founder Robert Redford back on the big screen.

The 78-year-old, who famously named the festival after 1969 classic “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” will make a rare appearance in front of the camera in “A Walk in the Woods,” based on US travel writer Bill Bryson’s book.

The film is among about 200 movies to be screened from Jan. 22 to Feb. 1 at the prestigious festival, which regularly premieres movies which go on to critical and Hollywood awards season glory.

“Boyhood” and “Whiplash,” for example, which both won Golden Globes this month and have multiple nominations for this year’s Academy Awards, each debuted at the film festival 12 months ago.

Redford, whose career had slowed before the 2013 solo tour de force in “All is Lost,” co-stars with Nick Nolte in “A Walk in the Woods,” in which he plays Bryson.

The veteran actor said he originally wanted his “Butch Cassidy” co-star Paul Newman to join him in the movie, about a long-distance hike along America’s Appalachian Trail.