The 2009 Sundance Film Festival, set in Park City, UT from January 15-25, premieres 32 documentary films in two categories of competition: 16 are by American filmmakers, 16 are from World Cinema. Subjects include current events, political analysis, environmental issues, cultural trends and portraits of iconic artists. The American films were selected from a record-breaking 953 submissions; there were 620 international submissions. Look for these films in theatres, on TV or DVD in about a year, or at other festivals in the interim.
After 30 years of repressive Taliban rule and wartime living conditions, pop culture is beginning to reappear in Afghanistan, as director Havana Marking reveals in Afghan Star.More »Director Doug Pray provides an insider's glimpse of the advertising business to show the effect that it has on the American zeitgeist.More »Director John Maringouin profiles Martin Strel, a Slovenian endurance swimmer who has negotiated the Mississippi, Danube, and Yangtze Rivers from source to sea, seeking to focus the world's attention on global pollution. The film follows Strel's Amazon challenge.More »Boy Interrupted is filmmaker Dana Perry's intensely personal and deeply moving investigation of the death of her son at age 15, by suicide.More »A stunning documentary about political repression in Burma, as reveals by Danish filmmaker Anders Ostergaard through the use of handheld footage shot, often under duress by the freedom-seeking Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), aka the Burma VJs.More »In Louie Psihoyos' film, undercover surveillance reveals inhumane practices employed by the Japanese company and town that supply dolphins to tourist attractions around the world. Flipper would be horrified. You will be, too.More »Acclaimed documentarian Joe Berlinger investigates the unconscionable dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in Ecuador's Amazon region, and poses the question of whether and/or when--after 13 years of legal battles--Chevron, the world's largest oil company, will be held accountable for its unacceptably bad corporate behavior.More »Inspired by William Bryant Logan’s book 'Dirt, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth,' documentarians Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow use an inventive mix of vignettes, animation, interviews with farmers and physicists, church leaders and children and others to present a fascinating primer on the highly important but oft ignored substance that covers our planet and is absolutely essential to our lives.More »Since industrial fishing began during the 1950s, Earth's oceans have been consistently depleted of fish. Overfishing has reached devastating proportions that challenge the environmental health and sustainability of life on our planet. Director Rupert Murray travels around the globe, examining the problem and asking what can be done to solve it.More »Filmmaker Natalia Almada explores Mexico's complicated history through the reminiscences of her grandmother, the daughter of General Plutarco Elías Calles, who fought in the Mexican Revolution and was the country's controversial president from 1924 to 1928. Almada's film reflects her very personal family link to Mexico’s history.More »
