From 3,661 feature-length films that were submitted this year, the Sundance staff has selected just 118 to fill the slots in its documentary and feature competitions, as well as in its Spectrum, Frontier, Midnight and Premiere categories.  The competition was even more intense when it comes to short films - a mere 96 were selected from 5632 submissions from around the world.  

According to Geoffrey Gilmore, longtime director of the festival, and John Cooper, director of programming, the films this year emphasize creative storytelling and emotional resonance.

What has me most excited is the documentary lineup — it’s really hard to tell from a brief synopsis of a fiction film whether it will be at all interesting, and this time it is especially difficult because I’m not familiar with the previous work of any of the fiction film directors.  But it’s hard to see how the documentaries could go terribly wrong with intriguing subjects like these:

Crude, dir. by Joe Berlinger - tells the story of the largest oil-related environmental lawsuit in the world, when Ecuadorian Indians accused a Chevron/Texaco subsidiary of dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic materials into unlined pits along the Amazon river from 1972 to 1992.

Dirt! The Movie, dir. by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow - a comic documentary exploring the increasingly antagonistic relationship between humans and their soil under their feet.  

When You’re Strange, dir. by Tom di Cillo - the first ever feature-length documentary about the Doors, by the director of the indie-hit Living in Oblivion.

Let’s Make Money, dir. by Erwin Wagenhofer - examines the complex and shocking affects of the global flow of money.

Nollywood Babylon, dir. by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal - explores the bustling home-grown movie industry in Nigeria.

Tyson, dir. by James Toback - this documentary about the former boxing champion allegedly pulls no punches, and was highly acclaimed when it premiered at the Cannes film festival.

To see the entire lineup of films, go to the press release page of the Sundance web site here.

Tags: documentary, film festival, sundance

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