Whether you are a filmmaker, or one of the Sundance programmers whose task it is to identify the films that make up a line-up, it is indeed the most wonderful, panic-filled and nerve racking time of the year. The 31st edition of the Sundance Film Festival kicks off on January 22nd with Park City and Salt Lake City playing host to some of the more innovative, thought-provoking narrative and non-fiction films of 2015. Last year, a Jenga tall order of 4,057 features and 8,161 shorts were submitted. Now let’s think about those numbers for a second.
Twenty years ago, Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb claimed the Grand Jury Prize Documentary award, Living in Oblivion‘s Tom DiCillo was honored with the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, and Edward Burns’ micro-budgeted The Brothers McMullen (there is a read-worthy, lively, eleventh hour account on how it was submitted to the fest in Ted Hope’s “Hope for Film”) won the Grand Jury Prize Dramatic prize. Engrained in the Sundance folklore is the ongoing blood, sweat and tears struggle of the American independent filmmaker, which also acts as a testament to the hard-working indie film community at large (shout out goes to the producers and technicians behind the camera). There is a method to the madness, and it’ll likely never change.
Prior to the exciting announcements that will be made in early December, last week I proposed four days worth of predictions, a total of 80 films (including 15 docu films) that have, in my opinion Sundance written all over them. Truth be told, some are expected longshots, there are the next to no-shots, some will land elsewhere and a good chunk will indeed be part of the line-up. Here is a batch of 30 other titles that we took a long, hard look at and finally didn’t include in our prediction profiles, but wouldn’t be surprised if a handful do trickle into one of the ten programmed sections.
- Actress Marianna Palka saw her debut film Good Dick land at 2008 edition of the fest and she now appears to be back into creative mode with a pair of projects. The one we are zeroing in on is titled Worthy and stars Gillian Zinser, Jason Ritter, Lukas Haas.