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LOS ANGELES — Enjoyment and sex, not necessarily in that order. Bleak self-scrutiny. Quirk, sometimes in the weird.
The Sundance Film Festival is nothing if not itself.
Festival programmers announced their match lineup on Wednesday, and all of those perennial themes are well represented. “The Surrogate” stars John Hawkes ( “Martha Marcy May Marlene” ) as a rhymer with an iron lung who sets out to lose his virginity. “Hello I Must Be Successful” centers on a demoralized woman in her 30s trying to sort out her living. “Filly Brown” tells the story of a Mexican maiden who uses hip-hop to cope with the incarceration of her mother.
“The films are more eclectic than ever and change one's mind than ever,” John Cooper, Sundance’s director, said in a blower interview. He added, “I know I say that every year, but this time I as a matter of fact mean it.”
The competition lineup includes 58 films, culled from 4,042 full-extent submissions, a 6 percent increase in submissions over last year. (A full list of films in contention, including the world cinema feature and documentary slates, is at the bottom of this pin.
Source: New York Times (blog)