2015 Sundance Film Festival unveils competition lineup

PanARMENIAN.Net - The 2015 Sundance Film Festival unveiled its lineup for the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary competitions as well as the out-of-competition NEXT section — the first of several announcements about the festival's lineup that will roll out over the coming week, The Hollywood Reporter said.

In a departure from the smaller-scale intimate dramas that have become a hallmark of the festival, this year’s U.S. Dramatic category will feature Craig Zobel’s post-apocalyptic thriller Z for Zachariah, which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie and Chris Pine, as well as a comedy reteaming of Jack Black and Mike White in Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel’s The D Train.

There will still be plenty of serious dramas represented in the Dramatic competition categories including Bryan Buckley’s The Bronze about a washed-up Olympian and Sarah Silverman playing against type in I Smile Back, which centers on a suburban wife and mother whose life unravels into drug-fueled promiscuity. But genre titles are continuing to gain traction with the festival, and this year is no exception. From Robert Eggers’ horror film The Witch, set in the 1630s in New England, to Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope, about an inner-city teen geek’s quest to be cool, non-traditional dramas will be competing for the top U.S. dramatic prize.

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the U.S. Dramatic category, says Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper, will be the performances given by well-known comedians.

"Sarah (Silverman) crushes it in a very intense role," he says. "People will really be impressed by her acting abilities. And though D Train has comedic elements, Jack Black pushes it in an interesting way. Both of them will get a lot of acclaim."

The festival, marking its 31st anniversary, runs Jan. 22-Feb. 1 in and around Park City, Utah, and will showcase 118 feature-length films, representing 29 countries and 45 first-time filmmakers, including 19 in competition. The films were selected from 12,166 submissions, including 4,105 feature-length films and 8,061 shorts. Of the feature submissions, 2,016 were from the U.S. and 2,089 were international. More than 100 feature films will make their world premieres at the festival.

Among the U.S. documentaries in competition are several that seem particularly timely. Echoing the Ferguson, Mo., protests, Marc Silver’s 3½ Minutes chronicles the story of an unarmed black 17-year-old who was shot to death at a Florida gas station by a white fellow customer. And Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s (T)error marks the first film to document on camera a covert counterterrorism sting as it unfolds.

On the World Cinema front, Kim Farrant’s Strangerland will make its world premiere. The Australia-Ireland co-production stars Nicole Kidman in a film about a couple whose marriage is pushed to the brink when their two teenage children disappear.

With perhaps the catchiest title of the festival, Ilinca Calugareanu’s Chuck Norris vs Communism (United Kingdom, Romania, Germany) will compete in the World Documentary heat. The film looks at 1980s Romania, where thousands of Western films smashed through the Iron Curtain and opened a window to the free world.

And this year’s NEXT section features Matt Sobel’s Take Me to the River, which centers on a naive California teen (Logan Miller) who tries to remain above the fray at his Nebraska family reunion, but a strange encounter places him at the center of a long-buried family secret.

I laughed harder, I cried more than usual," Sundance director of programming Trevor Groth tells THR. "I think it’s the filmmakers who pushed themselves and pushing storytelling in new directions."

This year’s Day One lineup will showcase The Bronze (U.S. dramatic), Alante Kavaite’s The Summer of Sangaile (international dramatic) and Jerry Rothwell’s How to Change the World (international documentary) as well as one yet-to-be-named U.S. documentary. “The work of independent artists inevitably reflects the state of our culture and the times in which we live,” said Robert Redford, president and founder of Sundance Institute. "Their stories are often irreverent, challenging, compelling and unexpected and not only possess the power to move and hopefully inspire audiences, but also to speak to our shared humanity.”

Over the coming days, the festival will roll out its lineups for the Spotlight, Park City at Midnight, New Frontier, Sundance Kids, Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections. Also on tap are this year’s selections for the Short Film section, a new Special Events section and off-screen programming.