Sundance 2010 competitors revealed

Ugh, January. What a steaming great turd of a month. Christmas has gone. New Year has gone. And all that are left are 31 days of bitterly cold deflation. Unless you are a pluckily independent movie-maker. In that case January is very much your time to shine, as that is when the Sundance Festival kicks into gear. And we now know all the runners and riders for the 2010 event.

The 2010 edition of Sundance is scheduled to take place on 21-31 January, and Variety reports that newly-promoted festival director John Cooper and his team have been hard at work preparing the competition line-up. 2,080 narrative features and 1,644 documentary films have been whittled down to a final 56, which will slug it out for the top honours in four major categories – U.S. Dramatic Competition, U.S. Documentary Competition, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and World Cinema Documentary Competition. So, for your consideration (well, not yours specifically. Unless you are on the Sundance jury, in which case you should really already know all of this gubbins), here is the full list of nominees (complete with official Sundance synopses for the entries in the narrative fields):

U.S. Dramatic Competition

Blue Valentine (dir: Derek Cianfrance) Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star in 'a story of love lost and love found told in two parallel moments in time.'

Douchebag (dir: Drake Doremos) 'On the verge of getting married, Sam Nussbaum insists he escort his younger brother, Tom, on a wild goose chase of a journey to find Tom's fifth grade girlfriend.'

The Dry Land (dir: Ryan Piers Williams) 'A U.S. soldier returning home from war struggles to reconcile his experiences abroad with the life and family he left in Texas.'

Happythankyoumoreplease (dir: Josh Radnor) 'Six New Yorkers negotiate love, friendship, and gratitude at a time when they're too old to be precocious and not ready to be adults.'

Hesher (dir: Spencer Susser) 'A mysterious, anarchical trickster descends on the lives of a family struggling to deal with a painful loss.' Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natalie Portman star.

Holy Rollers (dir: Kevin Tyler Asch) 'A young Hasidic man, seduced by money, power and opportunity becomes an international ecstasy smuggler.' Starring Jesse Eisenberg

The Imperialists Are Still Alive! (dir: Zeina Durra) 'Juggling the sudden abduction of her childhood sweetheart as well as a blooming love affair, a French Manhattanite makes her way as an artist in an indifferent, sometimes hostile world.'

Lovers of Hate (dir: Bryan Poyser) 'The shaky reunion of estranged brothers takes a turn for the worse when the women they both love chooses one over the other.'

Night Catches Us (dir: Tanya Hamilton) 'In 1978, complex political and emotional forces are set in motion when a young man returns to the race-torn Philadelphia neighbourhood where he came of age during the Black Power movement.'

Obselidia (dir: Diane Bell) 'A lonely librarian believes love is obsolete until a road trip to Death Valley with a beguiling cinematic projectionist teaches him otherwise.'

Skateland (dir: Anthony Burns) 'In the early 1980s, in small-town Texas, dramatic events force a 19 year-old skating rink manager to look at his life in a very new way.'

Howl (dir: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Freidman) 'A nonfiction drama about the young Allen Ginsberg finding his voice, the creation of the groundbreaking poem HOWL, and the landmark obscenity trial that followed.' James Franco plays Ginsberg.

Sympathy for Delicious (dir: Mark Ruffalo) 'A newly paralysed DJ gets more than he bargained for when he seeks out the world of faith healing.'

3 Backyards (dir: Eric Mendelsohn) 'A quiet suburban town becomes an intense emotional terrain for three residents over the course of one curious autumn day.'

Welcome to the Rileys (dir: Jake Scott) 'On a business trip to New Orleans, a damaged man seeks salvation by caring for a wayward young woman.' Starring James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart.

Winter's Bone (dir: Debra Granik) 'An unflinching Ozark Mountain girl hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact.'

U.S. Documentary Competition

Bhutto (dir: Jessica Hernandez and Johnny O'Hara)

CASINO JACK and the United States of Money (dir: Alex Gibney)

Family Affair (dir: Chico Colvard)

Freedom Riders (dir: Stanley Nelson)

Gas Land (dir: Josh Fox)

I'm Pat ______ Tillman (dir: Amir Bar-Lev)

Jean-Michael Basquiat: The Radiant Child (dir: Tamra Davis)

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (dir: Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg)

Lucky (dir: Jeffrey Blitz)

My Perestroika (dir: Robin Hessman)

The Oath (dir: Laura Poitras)

Restrepo (dir: Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington)

A Small Act (dir: Jennifer Arnold)

Smash His Camera (dir: Leon Gast)

12th and Delaware (dir: Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing)

Waiting for Superman (dir: Davis Guggenheim)

World Dramatic Competition

All That I Love (Poland, dir: Jacek Borcuch) 'In 1981, during the growing Polish Solidarity movement, four small-town teenagers form a punk rock band with the hope of playing at a local festival.'

Animal Kingdom (Australia, dir: David Michôd) 'After the death of his mother, a seventeen year-old boy is thrust precariously between an explosive criminal family and a detective who thinks he can save him.'

Boy (New Zealand, dir: Taiki Waititi) 'When his father returns home after many years away, 11 year-old Boy and his little brother Rocky must reconcile reality with the fantasy dad they created in their imagination.'

Grown Up Movie Star (Canada, dir: Adriana Maggs) 'After her mother runs away, a teenage girl, determined to grow up fast, is left to care for her hopelessly rural father.'

The Man Next Door (Argentina, dir: Mariano Cohn and Gastón) 'A small incident over two neighbours' common wall sparks a conflict which affects the intimacy of the view over the chimney; the protagonist sparks a conflict and paranoiac obsession destroys everyday life.'

Me Too (Spain, dir: Álvaro Pastor and Antonio Naharro) 'A 34 year-old college-educated man with Down's Syndrome and his free-spirited co-worker forge an unconventional relationship.'

Nuummioq (Greenland, dir: Otto Rosing and Torben Bech) 'A young man's journey through the exquisite natural landscape of Greenland allows him to piece together elements of his past and move on with his life.'

Peepil Live (India, dir: Anusha Rizvi) 'A satirical look at the predicament of a poor farmer who creates a media frenzy when, beset with debt, he announces that he will commit suicide so his family can receive government compensation.'

Son of Babylon (Iraq, dir: Mohamed Al Daradji) 'In the days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, a young Kurdish boy and his grandmother venture through Iraq on a quest to find their missing father/son.'

Southern District (Bolivia, dir: Juan Carlos Valdivia) 'In La Paz, Bolivia, in a villa surrounded by beautiful gardens, an upper-class family experiences final halcyon days of luxury as social change penetrates their bubble.'

The Temptation of St. Tony (Estonia, dir: Veiko Õunpuu) 'A mid-level manager who develops an aversion to being 'good' finds himself confronting the mysteries of middle-age and morality as he loses grasp of what was once his quiet life.'

Undertow (Colombia/France/Germany/Peru, dir: Javier Fuentes-Leon) 'An unusual ghost story set on the Peruvian seaside.'

Vegetarian (South Korea, dir: Lim Woo-seong) 'A young housewife finds herself having strange dreams that make her disgusted by meat, leading to trouble with her meat-loving husband and attention from her artist brother-in-law.'

Four Lions (UK, dir: Chris Morris) 'A comedy tour de force about a bunch of self-styled British jihadis.' Brass Eye creator Morris penned the script for his film in conjunction with Peep Show writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain.

World Documentary Competition

Enemies of the People (dir: Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath)

A Film Unfinished (dir: Yael Hersonski)

Fix ME (dir: Raed Andoni)

His and Hers (dir: Ken Wardrop)

Kick in Iran (dir: Fatima Geza Abdollahyan)

Last Train Home (dir: Lixin Fan)

The Red Chapel (dir: Mads Brügger)

Russian Lessons (dir: Olga Konskaya and Andrei Nekrasov)

Secrets of the Tribe (dir: José Padilha)

Sins of my Father (dir: Nicolas Entel)

Waste Land (dir: Lucy Walker)

Space Tourists (dir: Christian Frei)

Made it! And, in doing so, successfully illustrated how horrifically crappy the log line makes everything sound.

Sundance is of course the pre-eminent event in the American independent film-making calender, with every Thomas, Richard and Harold worth their indie salt making the annual pilgrimage to Park City, Utah, in the hope of landing the megabucks distribution deal that will turn their particular cinematic Cinderella into the Belle of the Movie Ball. There has been plenty of chat about Sundance in the last few years, with onlookers growing increasingly suspicious of what they perceive as a malignantly burgeoning studio influence compromising the festival's original mission statement. But while it is certainly true that big-name stars are far more conspicuously visible at Sundance than they were in the event's early days (as the high-profile casts of some of this year's competing films demonstrate), it still plays a key role in identifying at least a few of the movies that Joe and Josephine Public are going to be watching over the coming months.