Eric Lavallée

This year’s premiere selections give a couple of hot titles for the buyer’s market, satisfies a pair of indie distributors in Paramount Vantage and Lionsgate and rolls out the carpet for actor and director Sundance alumni. Paramount Vantage will showcase Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan and Mike White’s Year of the Dog while Lionsgate gets to showcase their Toronto film festival pick up in Sarah Polley’s Away From Her and the spring release of Marco Kreuzpaintner’s Trade. After the successful money maker of The Illusionist, the Yari Film Group might want to keep Rod Lurie’s Resurrecting the Champ for their own.

The at least a good half of the films represented by first time feature debuts, this year’s U.S Dramatic comp is headed by veteran filmmaker (and yet relatively new) David Gordon Green and his Stewart O'Nan novel adaptation of Snow Angels. Perhaps the most loudest (in term of controversy) film will be the rough Deborah Kampmeier portrait Hounddog - starring a Dakota Fanning in what shall become a transition role for her from Hollywood to Indie, but from child actor to adult-material. And an indie festival wouldn’t be a festival without the presence of the Posey name. Zoe Cassavetes will introduce our friend Parker in Broken English - a 30’s generation relationship film with plenty of name folks – including mom, Gena Rowlands.

Yes that Paul Verhoeven - the one who made Showgirls is on the Oscar's shortlist this year for best foreign feature. Sony Pictures Classics has provided us with the one sheet and mix of trailers below. The film gets released on March 9th.

Another eclectic docu section this year ranging in subject matters such as U.S Foreign policies, internal American struggles, global issues and human portraits of the young, old and stupid.

Thanks to the wealth of affordable filmmaking technologies and in particular laptop video editing and online portals that upload and download short films, the folks at Sundance are at the top of the heap – the short films that are selected for the festival will be posted online once the fest resumes. This year boosts an impressive selection of American and international short films – the organizers selected 71 short films, representing 19 countries, from a whooping 4445 submissions! Sectioned off into 3 categories (dramatic, documentary, and animated) and into two sections (American & World).