New films from directors Jonathan Kasdan, Todd Louiso and Kirby Dick will debut at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, along with works starring John Hawkes, William H. Macy, Olivia Thirlby, Paul Dano and Jena Malone and written by Lena Dunham and Antonio Campos.
The Sundance Institute selected 110 films out of more than 4,000 feature-length submissions. Films screening in the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary competitions were announced on Wednesday; additional programming will be announced in coming days.
The lineup is a typical Sundance smorgasbord of low-budget indies and unknown films hoping to be breakouts on the level with past festival successes like "Winter's Bone," "An Education" and last year's "Like Crazy" and "Martha Marcy May Marlene."
“We are, and always have been, a festival about the filmmakers," said Sundance founder Robert Redford in a press release announcing the lineup. "So what are they doing? What are they saying? They are making statements about the changing world we are living in. Some are straight-forward, some novel and some offbeat but always interesting. One can never predict. We know only at the end, and I love that.”
Films in the U.S. Dramatic competition include the hip-hop drama "Filly Brown" (photo), with Lou Diamond Phillips; Kasdan's "The First Time," about high schoolers; "For Ellen," writer-director So Young Kim's story of a musician fighting for custody of his daughter; "Hello, I Must Be Going," from director Louiso, with Melanie Lynskey and Blythe Danner; and "Nobody Walks," a drama directed and co-written by Ry Russo-Young and co-written by Dunham.
Oscar nominee Kirby Dick's "The Invisible War" is an entry in the U.S. Documentary competition, along with films about Chinese activist Ai Weiwei ("Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry"), the collapse of Detroit ("Detropia") and the war on drugs ("The House I Live In").
The international entries include "Violeta Went to Heaven," Chile's entry into this year's foreign-language category at the Oscars.
The 2012 Sundance Film Festival will take place from January 19 to 29 in Park City, Utah.
Films at last year's festival included Drake Doremus's "Like Crazy," Vera Farmiga's "Higher Ground," Sean Durkin's "Martha Marcy May Marlene," Jeff Nichols's "Take Shelter," Dee Rees' "Pariah" and the documentaries "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey," "Page One" and the Oscar shortlist entries "Buck," "If a Tree Falls," "Sing Your Song" and "We Were Here."
The selections, from the Sundance press release:
U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION
The world premieres of 16 American narrative feature films.
Beasts of the Southern Wild / U.S.A. (Director: Benh Zeitlin, Screenwriters: Benh Zeitlin, Lucy Alibar) — Waters gonna rise up, wild animals gonna rerun from the grave, and everything south of the levee is goin’ under, in this tale of a six year old named Hushpuppy, who lives with her daddy at the edge of the world.
