![]() doc category’s 16 world premieres are Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s look at the collapse of U.S. 1,983 international).Īs usual, the documentary programs cover a host of artistic, political and social issues “in a real, deep, comprehensive way,” Cooper says. While the total number of feature-length films that will be screened is slightly down, the number of submissions rose once again, about 6 percent, from 3,812 films in 2011 to 4,042 this year (2,059 U.S. The festival program as a whole, which includes six out-of-competition categories (those titles will be unveiled Thursday and Monday), will feature 110 feature-length films from 31 countries, including 88 world premieres. narrative and documentary, world narrative and documentary -include 58 total films, 48 of them world premieres and 26 from first-time filmmakers. The fest’s four competition categories - U.S. That authenticity reads as interesting and fresh and makes you want to see these movies because they don’t seem like a rehash of old stories.” They’re a little more exacting in their storylines and characters. There’s a bar that’s being raised each year from the filmmakers between themselves, knowing what they have to do to compete in the independent film world. “The films that we saw have a general quality that is better. “I was very optimistic putting the program together,” says Cooper. The most notable aspect of the festival’s 28th edition, however, may just be a surge in quality brought on by the new limitations of the business, particularly on the narrative side. (Campos is part of Borderline Films, which also produced Sean Durkin’s 2011 drama Martha Marcy May Marlene, and he had his film Afterschool at Cannes in 2008.) “That one’s going to rattle some cages,” says director of programming Trevor Groth.Įvery year when the program is announced, journalists and other observers inevitably search for trends and messages in the films and filmmakers that have been selected. Meanwhile, Antonio Campos’ intense Simon Killer, about a recent college graduate who falls in love with a Paris prostitute, could provide some provocation. PHOTOS: What to Pack When Heading to Sundance Some are straightforward, some novel and some offbeat but always interesting.” “So what are they doing? What are they saying? They are making statements about the changing world we are living in. “We are, and always have been, a festival about the filmmakers,” said Sundance Institute founder and president Robert Redford. Sheldon Candis’ Luv features an orphaned 11-year-old Baltimore boy coming to terms with the truth about his uncle, while Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere follows an African-American woman struggling to keep her identity after her husband is incarcerated. PHOTOS: Behind the Scenes at the Sundance Film FestivalĪctor-writer Mark Webber, who co-wrote Joshua Leonard’s 2011 Sundance premiere The Lie, will appear in two films in competition this year: Save the Date from filmmaker Michael Mohan, and The End of Love, which Webber also wrote and directed. Olmos’ Filly Brown, a drama about a Mexican girl who copes with her mother’s incarceration through hip-hop music. starring John Krasinski and Rosemarie DeWitt James Ponsoldt’s Smashed, about the effect on a young married couple when the woman decides to get sober and Youssef Delara and Michael D. narrative competition consists of 16 world premieres, including So Yong Kim’s For Ellen, about a struggling musician fighting for custody of his daughter starring Paul Dano and Jena Malone Ry Russo-Young’s Nobody Walks, which follows a New York City artist as she wreaks havoc with one family’s lives over a weeklong visit in L.A. With so many financial challenges you would think it wouldn’t be, but maybe that’s that whole thing of art succeeding more when there are a lot of challenges to the world itself.” ![]() “The independent film movement is very healthy right now,” says Cooper, in his third year as director. PHOTOS: Actors and Filmmakers of Sundance 2011
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