With All Good Things and Biutiful confirming their December dates, Tree of Life apparently falling back into this "calender" year and Peter Weir's The Way Back looking at a Telluride opening, there are a batch of films (ten listed below) that are not entirely ready and we are not entirely sure why.

Every Production Designer has an ace or two in their deck – my feeling is that veteran Production Designer Jade Healy's trump card might be Chris Trujillo. Having worked on several low budget NYC-based, independent film productions in 2009 means that, the Art Director can file 2010 as a great breakout year.

This August, we profile David Michôd, who when asked to be profiled was (still is) in the midst of a lengthy promotional screening/press junket tour for his directorial debut, Animal Kingdom which will receive a limited release in New York, Los Angeles on August 13th via Sony Pictures Classics.

Now that all bets are off on Terrence Malick showing up on the Lido, and Wong Kar-wai's The Grand Master appears to be on the same no-show list (the fest have announced that Andrew Lau's The Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen has their second opening night flick celebrating the anniversary of Bruce Lee’s 70th birthday).

Whether it's the depleted Americana represented in the chesterfield brown bungalow that the title character from Hesher decides to make his temporary shelter, or the knowledge of what makes for a cubicle layout of an office space easily filmable in (500) Days of Summer, it takes an architecturally sound understanding, a strong know how for the aesthetic described on the pages of a script to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character's dwellings into life size representations of the world he inhibits.

Of all the filmmakers profiled in our American New Wave 25, my guess is that Jaffe Zinn could be the next in line to launch the "film" portion of his career. Like several other folks featured on our list, you could describe Jaffe as a hybrid artist: he is one half of the group Folded Light, an illustrator and the portion that we'll concentrate on is his status as director/writer of Magic Valley - a film that could easily end up in Park City might actually be slotted for the Venice Film Festival sidebar premiere.

Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine affecting and memorable relationship study is brought to life via layers of descriptive info – you have Production Designer to thank for that boost of realism. From dressing suburbia settings to adding subtle traits to folks living in one of the five boroughs, if I were to poll the numerous filmmakers with who've worked with Inbal Weinberg, I'd bet they'd say she's gets the look down to a tee.

You might be surprised to learn that, one of the producers on Yorgos Lanthimos' sophomore, Un Certain Regard-winning feature, was a NYU grad and part of the emerging indie scene in Austin. While obtaining her MFA in film production at the University of Texas, Greek born Athina Rachel Tsangari was a full fledged Austinite who co-founded and was the artistic director of the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival...

In our next profile, we feature a filmmaker who began his career at exceptional, four years of age. Dash Shaw was probably the kid with those crazy Crayola kits, and if you've guessed right - his entry into film is by way of his background in comics and illustration. In 2010, the Sundance Institute invited Shaw for both the Screenwriters and Directors lab where he workshopped the hand-drawn, 2D animated tale titled, The Ruined Cast which should hit film festival circuit sometime in 2011.

Within a short time span, Andrew Renzi has built himself a sharp film resume. Working in different producing capacities on such films as Antonio Campos' Afterschool, Mark Ruffalo's Sundance winner Sympathy for Delicious and a pair that we've featured in our New Wave list in Jody Lee Lipes (Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be the Same) and Alistair Banks Griffin (Two Gates of Sleep - see pic of Renzi working on actor David Call), Renzi is an up-and-coming producer who has a knack for sizing up talent beyond the pages of a script.

If you haven't heard of Reed Morano before, then you'll surely have no choice but to be aware of this workaholic come January of next year. Working back to back on Victoria Mahoney's Yelling to the Sky , Elgin James' Little Birds and So Yong Kim's For Ellen, means this in-demand Director of Photography has a stovetop full of menu items for Park City in 2011.

Tucked away at the other end of the Croisette is the Cannes sidebar section called the Critic's Week. At most, the selection committee picks ten features in total from first and second time filmmakers, so one could argue that the films selected for this competition are pretty damn special. It took Detroit native David Robert Mitchell about eight years to fully realize his creation, and if we base ourselves on the reception The Myth of the American Sleepover received at SXSW (where it claimed the Special Jury Prize for Best Ensemble) then the future looks rosy for both the filmmaker and the coming-of-age dramedy.

A good film producer hires the right personnel and makes sure the production doesn't go over budget. A great film producer does that and supports talented new voices. You could say that Kyle Martin appears to often be at the right place at the right time.

Sweat, money and no tears is how I would describe the journey of our next featured new voice in indie film. I mentioned this filmmaker in my predictions for last year's Sundance, but Victoria Mahoney's feature film debut, Yelling to the Sky was (part of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab class of 2006 with Sin Nombre, Lake Tahoe and Treeless Mountain) still in post.

If Sundance is the "Super Bowl" event for burgeoning local filmmakers hoping to first get noticed, then imagine how it must feel to be presenting your first feature at the "World Cup" of film festivals. If you're a regular reader on the site, then you might remember us profiling Alistair Banks Griffin prior to him premiering his directorial debut Two Gates of Sleep at the Cannes Film Festival.

What do filmmakers Sean Durkin, Lance Edmands and Alistair Banks Griffin all have in common? Besides being future talents worth keeping tabs on and being featured on our American New Wave 25 list, they all use the same “ace” in their deck. Of all the people included on this list, Jody Lee Lipes needs no introduction.

Her father can say that he has been in an Oscar-winning film called Precious, but I'd say Zoë Kravitz definitely has a leg up on her musician father when it comes to acting. Slowly building her career with bit, supporting parts in No Reservations, The Brave One and indie films Assassination of a High School President, Birds of America and The Greatest, this indiegrrl actress is looking towards a very bright future.

I can safely make the mention that, my next profiled filmmaker will premiere his feature film debut somewhere between Venice/TIFF of this year all the way up to Sundance/Berlin/Cannes of next. Filmmaker Braden King has so many other endeavours occupying his time that it's not wonder that HERE, a project first conceived around 2005 is now beginning to see the light...and is producing some offspring of its own.

Veteran publicists will tell you, all press is good press. My hope is that when Summit Ent. does decide to release The Beaver that the certain distractions don't overshadow someone's official breakout party. Kyle Killen was probably an anonymous scribe looking to get his foot in the door, and in late 2008, that door was ripped from its hinges.

Unlike many folks featured in this American New Wave 25 series, Brady Kiernan's zip code isn't related to any of NYC's five boroughs. His feature film debut Stuck Between Stations was born out of a "what can we work on next" type of chit-chat at SXSW, and brought to life in the untypical indie movie production city in the Mid-West city in the state of Minnesota.

There was once a time when folk in the film business stayed away from anything that was war-themed, but then some unique insight (The Messenger, The Hurt Locker) started to trickle in and I wouldn't say that the business is more receptive to the idea, but there appears to be a lot of room for unconventional exposes focusing on the apres war syndromes. I think we'll soon be adding Return to this list.

We'll soon see if acting is indeed in Dakota Johnson's blood. Her patriarch entourage includes Antonio Banderas and if she ever wants to do television she can ask her father Don Johnson for cues, but when your grandmother is named Tippi Hedren, your mother is Melanie Griffith, I guess your choice in career paths is predestined.

If I'm Elgin James, I'm making sure that I have a good publicist for a three week stint come January 2011. With production having taken place this summer with talent on both sides of the camera and having participated in both the Institute's Screenwriters and Directors Labs, James' directorial debut is a Park City premiere shoe-in.

Christine Vachon might have been a pioneer for women working as independent film producers, but there are a good bunch that are joining the ranks. I'd be tempted to say that NYC-based producer Jen Gatien comes from the school of hard knocks, as she was the driving force behind a pair of films which weren't the easiest to bring to market in the Cannes selected Abel Ferrara's Chelsea on the Rocks and the controversial Sundance drama Hounddog.

Getting his feet wet with a gig on Michael Mayer's A Home at the End of the World, working for Todd Solondz (Palindromes) and adding post-prod assistant experience from Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, Katherine Dieckmann's Diggers and television's The Wire, surely helped trace the route of where this graduate of NYU’s Tisch (2004) is headed, but it's Vacationland, the award-winning thesis short film that earned Lance Edmands his stars.