Strong European presence in Sundance selection

by Naman Ramachandran

03/12/2010 - The health of European cinema is reflected in the Sundance Film Festival (January 20-30) selection for 2011. Debutant John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard [trailer, film focus] – boasting a host of Irish talent including Liam Cunningham (Hunger [trailer, film focus], The Wind That Shakes the Barley [trailer, film focus]), Fionnula Flanagan (The Invention of Lying), Dominique McElligott (Moon [trailer]), David Wilmot (The Tudors), Rory Keenan (Zonad) and Pat Shortt (Garage [trailer, film focus]) – will open the World Cinema Dramatic competition.

Europe dominates this strand with Amor Hakkar’s A Few Days of Respite (France/Algeria), Anne Sewitsky’s Happy Happy (Norway), Roberta Torres’ Lost Kisses [trailer] (Italy) and Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur [trailer] (UK) also in competition.

It’s a similar story in the World Cinema Documentary competition with Jarreth Merz’s An African Election (Switzerland/US), Phil Cox’s The Bengali Detective (UK/US/India), Göran Olsson’s The Black Power Mixtape 1965-75 (Sweden/US), David Sington’s The Flaw (UK), Ali Samadi Ahadi’s The Green Wave (Germany), Ian Palmer’s Knuckle (Ireland/UK), Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Position Among the Stars (Netherlands), James Marsh’s Project Nim (UK) and Asif Kapadia’s Senna (UK), vying for the top prize.

The festival’s Spotlight section features Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg [trailer, film focus] (Greece), Susanne Bier’s In a Better World [trailer] (Denmark), Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies [trailer] (France/Canada) and Richard Ayoade’s Submarine [trailer] (UK).

The Park City at Midnight strand showcases Andre Ovredal’s Troll Hunter (Norway), while the New Frontier section features Lech Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross (Poland/Sweden) and John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses (UK).