Sundance Film Festival 2008: Dramatic Competition Lineup

High profile indie pics and your usual list of complete unknown titles are the make up of this year's Dramatic comp. 

Among the more anticipated selections we find Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's sophomore feature to their Sundance profiled Half Nelson. Their new film Sugar is star-less tale that looks at the broken dreams of a Dominican baseball prospect plucked from his native country to play in the U.S. minor-league system. Story is a fictional tale based on Miguel “Sugar” Santos, a teenager who ends up far from home playing for a team in the Midwest after showing baseball aptitude in his native country. 

Groundswell Productions' The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (see pic above) and Big Beach Film's Sunshine Cleaning are the two premiere titles of the section that will have buyers in a frenzy. Christine Jeffs directs Amy Adams and Emily Blunt in Sunshine Cleaning, while Rawson Thurber adapts his version of the first novel from Michael Chabon.

Actor Clark Gregg will attend Park City as the director for Choke (Chuck Palahniuk novel) follows Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell), a sex addict who works as a Colonial War re-enactor and runs a con scheme that involves deliberately choking in restaurants and attaching himself parasitically to his rescuers, all to fund his mother's (Huston) care at a private mental hospital.

Another actor Paul Schneider (All the Real Girls, Lars and the Real Girl) is premiering his directorial debut Pretty Bird. Paul Giamatti plays Curt, a lovable loser who believes he can invent a rocket belt that will bring him fame and fortune. He enlists the help of friends and trouble arises when they actually succeed and they begin turning against each other.

Here's the complete list of titles for the…:

DRAMATIC COMPETITION

American Son:The story of a young Marine, fresh from Camp Pendleton, who is forced to confront the complexities of adulthood and a volatile home life during a four-day Thanksgiving leave.

Anywhere, U.S.A.: Written by Anthony (Chusy) Haney-Jardine and Jennifer Macdonald, told in three segments ranging from satirical to tragic, the film is a wildly original look at American manners, prejudices, and family dynamics.

Ballast: A riveting, lyrical portrait of an emotionally frayed family whose lives are torn asunder by a tragic act in a small Mississippi Delta town.

Choke: Based on the Chuck Palahniuk book, “Choke” follows Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex addict who works as a Colonial War re-enactor and runs a con scheme that involves deliberately choking in restaurants and attaching himself parasitically to his rescuers, all to fund his mother's (Huston) care at a private mental hospital. He is forced to address his intimacy issues when he falls in love with his mother's doctor and discovers that he is unable to perform with the one woman he actually likes.

Downloading Nancy: The film centers on Nancy, an unhappy wife who, instead of committing suicide, meets a man over the Internet and hires him to kill her. Problems arise when they form a relationship.

Frozen River:“Frozen River” is a dramatic feature film which takes place in the days before Christmas near a little-known border crossing on the Mohawk reservation between New York State and Quebec. Here, the lure of fast money from smuggling presents a daily challenge to single moms who would otherwise be earning minimum wage. Two women- one white, one Mohawk, both single mothers faced with desperate circumstances- are drawn into the world of border smuggling across the frozen water of the St. Lawrence River.

Good Dick: Marianna Palka stars as a vulnerable young woman drawn into a relationship with a videostore clerk.

The Last Word: Based on Haley's script, this is about a reclusive writer played by Bentley, who makes his living composing other people's suicide notes. His life gets turned upside down after he embarks on a tumultuous romance with Ryder, the sister of a recently deceased client.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh: This is an adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon’s debut novel which is set in Pittsburgh in the early eighties, the story chronicles the last true summer of Art Bechstein's (FOSTER) youth. Stuck in a dead-end job working for his eccentric sometime girlfriend Phlox (SUVARI), and forced into an endless series of airless dinners with his mobster father (NOLTE), Art begins to believe that perhaps he doesn't even exist at all. What begins as a mundane summer is quickly interrupted when he encounters a beautiful debutante (MILLER) and her lusty, no good hoodlum of a boyfriend Cleveland (SARSGAARD). Together they reveal a side of Art and Pittsburgh that he has never known. As the summer boils on and their adventures darken, Art decides to risk everything to preserve his new-found paradise, and thrusts himself headlong into the blurring boundaries of family, friendship, and love.

North Starr: Written by Stanton, about a young black Houston man who, after witnessing his best friend's murder, moves to a backward rural town.

Phoebe in Wonderland Written by Barnz, Fanning plays a rebellious little girl who clashes with the rule-obsessed authority figures in her life. She seeks enlightenment from her unconventional drama teacher (Clarkson).

Pretty Bird: Giamatti plays Curt, a lovable loser who believes he can invent a rocket belt that will bring him fame and fortune. He enlists the help of friends and trouble arises when they actually succeed and they begin turning against each other.

Sleep Dealer: Written by Rivera and David Riker, a social commentary-infused sci-fier about three strangers who attempt to break through future technological barriers to connect in a world of closed borders and virtual labor.

Sugar: Written by Anna Boden and Fleck, this will look at the promise and broken dreams of a Dominican baseball prospect plucked from his native country to play in the U.S. minor-league system. Story is a fictional tale based on Miguel “Sugar” Santos, a teenager who ends up far from home playing for a team in the Midwest after showing baseball aptitude in his native country. Project is described as a dramatic and cautionary account of the baseball scouting machine with a good-natured character at its center.

Sunshine Cleaning: Written by Megan Holley, “Cleaning” is a character piece about Rose Lorkowski, tired and frustrated by her job cleaning other people’s homes, anxious to earn more money to send her eight year-old son Oscar to private school, Rose goes into business with her unreliable sister Norah doing biohazard removal and crime scene clean up. In the process of their new business, the sisters come to terms with the messiness of their own lives and begin to move beyond it.

The Wackness Story, set in 1994, centers on a troubled teenage drug dealer and a drug-addled psychiatrist — after the former trades pot for therapy sessions, then falls for the doctor's daughter.