The Sundance Institute announced much of the slate for the 2016 Sundance Film Festival late yesterday, setting the table for the forthcoming year in indie film (and providing dozens of filmmakers with one of the best emails of their lives).
A total of 66 titles were announced in five categories: the U.S. Dramatic and Documentary Competitions, the World Dramatic and Documentary Competitions, and the Next program, with showcases “bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling.”
As per usual, the slates include several actors of note, including Elisabeth Moss, Jenny Slate, Octavia Spencer, Rebecca Hall, Ellen Page, Allison Janney, Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael C. Hall, Armie Hammer, Anna Gunn, Jesse Plemons, Molly Shannon, Gabrielle Union, Melanie Lynskey, Nick Kroll, Jena Malone, Erykah Badu, Thomas Middleditch, Adam Pally, Cobie Smulders, Alia Shawkat, Natasha Lyonne, and Wyatt Cenac.
Actors Clea DuVall and Nate Parker will both appear in and direct their respective films The Birth of a Nation and The Intervention, while Nick Jonas will make a play for indie respectability in Goat (directed by Andrew Neel and co-written by David Gordon Green). And in one of the odder coincidences in many a moon, the festival will feature two apparently unrelated films inspired by Christine Chubbuck, the television personality who committed suicide on the air in 1974: Antonio Campos’s narrative film Christine and Robert Greene’s documentary Kate Plays Christine.
The full listing of films and filmmakers is available here.