Festival Watch: Mary and Max Opens Sundance

10 months ago 16th Jan 11:01

The Sundance Film Festival, which is celebrating it's 25th anniversary this year kicked off last night in unusual style, it's opening film was feature-length clay animation picture Mary and Max.

The film follows a twenty year pen pal friendship between an unlikely pair; Mary Dinkle, a chubby, lonely 8-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horowitz, a 44-year-old Jewish man, who is severely obese, suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, and lives an isolated life in New York City.

And unlike Wallace and Gromit and Chicken run that have gone before it this is not a film for children as it explores very adult themes of suicide, mental health, alcoholism and sex and uses the voice talent of Toni Colette and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

And while it may be the oddest movie that has ever opened the festival it represents everything that Sundance stands for; Australian filmmaker Adam Elliot has produced a film that is so unique that it probably will not be snapped up by any studio, mainly through the lack of confidence on their part to back a picture that is so far from the mainstream.

However tough times lie ahead for the festival this year with the economic situation as well as the presidential inauguration next week that will over shadow events at Sundance.

But in the opening press conference Robert Redford said:"The way we program this festival is the same way we've done it since we started. What's changed of course is the world around us.

"For art, when economics gets tough, it will survive. It always has and it always will."