2007 Sundance Documentary Line-Up Announced

The 2007 Sundance Film Festival is just around the corner, kicking things off on January 17th, 2007, in Salt Lake City, and the full line-up of films was announced this week. Sundance is, of course, one of the best places for studios to pick up the hottest indie flicks of the year, and I was particularly blown away by the number of interesting documentaries in competition this year. Here are a few of the ones that caught my attention:

My Kid Could Paint That (Director: Amir Bar-Lev) - Focuses on young painter Marla Olmstead, who at 6 years old has sold over $300,000 worth of artwork and has been compared to such greats as Pollock and Picasso. But are they just random splatters of colour or the mark of a true genius?

Zoo (Director: Robinson Devor) - This is the Enumclaw horse sex documentary that we heard about a while back. It tells the story of “seemingly normal Seattle family man who met his untimely end after an unusual encounter with a horse”. ThinkFilm have already picked it up for distribution I believe.

Chasing Ghosts: Beyond The Arcade (Director: Lincoln Ruchti) - About the original champions of the first ever world video game competition, held at the Twin Galaxies Arcade in Iowa in 1982.

Protagonist (Director: Jessica Yu) - From the Academy Award winning director of In the Realms of the Unreal and Breathing Lessons, this movie weaves together the stories of a German terrorist, a bank robber, an “ex-gay” evangelist, and a martial arts student.

A Very British Gangster (Director: Donal MacIntyre) - Doc on Dominic Noonan, head of one of Britain’s biggest crime families.

For The Bible Tells Me So (Director: Daniel Karslake) - Another provocative religious documentary. “Grounded by the stories of five conservative Christian families, the film explores how the religious right has used its interpretation of the Bible to support its agenda of stigmatizing the gay community and eroding the separation between church and state.”

Manufactured Landscapes (Director: Jennifer Baichwal) - An exploration of the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky, who focuses on industrialization and the impact it has on our planet.

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (Director: Rory Kennedy) - An “inside look at the abuses that occurred at the infamous Iraqi prison in the fall of 2003″.

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Director: Steven Okazaki) - “A visceral, topical and moving portrait of the human cost of atomic warfare.”

It’s also interesting to note that in the Dramatic Competition this year there are fictional entries from a number of well-known documentarians: The Pool, directed by Chris Smith (American Movie), Joshua, directed by George Ratcliff (Hell House), and Rocket Science, directed by Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound).

Source: Yahoo!

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