What To Watch At Sundance

10 months ago 14th Jan 14:00

No sooner has the festival circuit finished and it seems to be beginning all over again as the Sundance Film Festival gets underway tomorrow with a screening of Adam Elliot's first feature Mary and Max.

In recent years Sundance has unearthed some real cinema gems as Choke and The Wackness caused a stir with audiences last year and who can forget Little Miss Sunshine which lit up screenings back in 2006?

2008 was a successful year for the festival as the likes of Frozen River and Man on Wire were screened to acclaim and have gone on to find success on the awards circuit as did Martin MxDonagh's black comedy In Bruges, which saw Colin Farrell pick up a Golden Globe for his performance at the weekend.

So here at FemaleFirst we have taken a look at the movies lined up for the ten day festival to provide a guide as to what you should be watching at Sundance this time around.

Animation Mary and Max from Australian filmmaker Adam Elliot kicks off the festival using the voices of Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the title characters in a tale of pen-friendship between two very different people; Mary Dinkle, a chubby lonely eight year old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horovitz, a 44 year old, severely obese, Jewish man with Aspergers Syndrome living in the chaos of New York.

Spanning 20 years and 2 continents, Mary and Max's friendship survives much more than the average diet of life's ups and downs.

Greg Mottola's comedy Adventureland is also one to look out for starring Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg. Set in the summer of 1987 and centred around a recent college grad (Eisenberg) who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park, only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.