The organizers of the 2009 edition of the Sundance Film Festival have announced the films competing in the four main categories: US Documentary, US Dramatic, World Documentary, World Dramatic. It's a sobering bunch of movies, with the docs looking especially strong this year. (The Salt Lake City Tribune breaks down the offerings here.)
Non-fiction themes include the woeful state of the environment, specifically our sick oceans ("The Cove"), the abused Amazon rainforest ("Crude," from "Brother's Keeper" director Joe Berlinger), the soil ("Dirt! The Movie"), and global overfishing ("The End of the Line," from the UK), as well as heroic individual activists ("The Reckoning," about ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo; "Sergio," about UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello; "Shouting Fire," about First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus; and "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe," about, er, William Kunstler.)
Lighter documentary fare (relatively speaking) includes "When You're Strange," Tom DiCillo's version of The Doors story, and "Good Hair," Chris Rock's examination of African-American hair, nappy or not. "The September Issue" hangs out with Anna Wintour for nine months, while "Afghan Star" follows the arrival of an "American Idol"-style show on Afghanistan TV.
On the dramatic front, films in the US competition include "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," a fictional adaptation of the non-fiction book by the late David Foster Wallace (directed by actor John Krasinski of "The Office," no less); "Arlen Faber," featuring Kat Dennings, Olivia Thirlby, and Jeff Daniels; Paul Giamatti as an actor having an existential crisis in "Cold Souls"; a new mumblecore movie (Lynn Shelton's "Humpday," starring Mark Duplass); and "Paper Hearts," which stars Charlene Yi and her boyfriend Michael Cera as themselves. I think.
The international dramas sound interestingly wiggy: Japan's "The Clone Returns," about a dead astronaut brought back to life; France's "Louise-Michel," in which disgruntled factory-working women hire a hit man to killing off a downsizing executive; "An Education," written by Nick Hornby; and Mexico's "Heart of Time," about a woman falling in love with a Zapatista.
The great thing about Sundance is that almost all these films are unknown quantities, lending a genuine sense of discovery to the festival experience. Tomorrow they'll announce the out-of-competition slate, which will feature both more commercial endeavors and deeper obscurities.
