It can be easy to assume that the world’s refugees are the unfortunate and senseless collateral damage of political, military, and racial repression. But what of the countless millions of souls who fall victim to the devastating effects of climate change and are forced to move from their homelands to other parts of the world where they may not be so welcome? Veteran filmmaker Michael Nash circled the globe to put a very real and poignant face on the migratory effects of environmental change in Climate Refugees, which premiered Saturday night at the Festival. After the screening, Nash took part in a Q&A along with producer Justin Hogan, and environmental migration expert Koko Warner.

“We see nothing,” says Yael Hersonski, the director of the powerful documentary A Film Unfinished, which will have its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. “Every day we are bombarded by images of atrocity, but we cannot really see them. We simply look, and say, ‘Oh dear.

Juan Escobar was born into a life of privilege. His charmed childhood was shattered in 1993, when his father, the notoriously brutal Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, was gunned down in Medellín. Juan Escobar changed his name to Sebastián Marroquín and moved with his mother and sister to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to escape the stigma of his father’s name and reputation, and has struggled to come to terms with his family’s circumstances ever since.

Anna Deavere Smith casts a wide net. An award-winning playwright, chameleonic actress, published author, and university professor, Smith’s range belies not only brilliance, but an inexhaustible curiosity. Her art is born of a conviction that there’s always more to know, always assumptions to upend, always more to life and people than we’re willing to acknowledge.

Bad news. A film set in the 1980s is a now considered a period film. Director Anthony Burns and writer Brandon Freeman came to that conclusion fairly easily when setting Skateland in early ’80s East Texas.

“To be very honest, I’ve had a growing love affair with cinema,” says New York-based Iranian filmmaker Shirin Neshat, who brings her first feature film project, Women Without Men (Zanan-e bedun-e mardan),to the Festival this year. “Part of it is the form and the power of storytelling and narrative,” she says, “but it’s also the relationship cinema has to its audiences. It’s very, very powerful.

No one could believe me when I said I had never seen Harold and Maude. I honestly don’t know either how it slipped by me. It’s the perfect film for me: about how life is so amazing and at times so horrible that you have to seize every minute.

A feature film from Greenland is a true rarity even in the global film festival circuit. So the arrival this year of Nuummioq in the Festival’s World Dramatic Cinema Competition qualifies as an event in itself.
Nuummioq, directed by Torben Bech and Otto Rosing, is a moody character study that follows Malik, a young, introverted construction worker who embarks on a journey that is both physical and spiritual after he is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.

Jay and Mark Duplass radiated giddy exuberance from the stage of the Eccles Theatre before the Saturday evening premiere of their film, Cyrus. The filmmaking brothers got their start in the ultra-low-budget, uber-indie “mumblecore” genre, and seemed genuinely thrilled to arrive at Sundance 2010 as a couple of Festival darlings.Cyrus stars John C.

Daddy Longlegs is the funny, compassionate, and somewhat troubling Safdie brothers’ portrait of Lenny (Ronald Bronstein), who may be the most irresponsible father in recent cinematic history.
Lenny’s young sons, Sage and Frey (Sage and Frey Ranaldo), get to be with their father two weeks out of the year. Lenny is a projectionist at a Manhattan movie theater who is a loving, thoughtful father but one who’s more than a little misguided (like the time he can’t find anyone to keep his boys, so he crushes a sleeping pill and gives them part of it, thus putting them in stage four sleep for several days).

Director and screenwriter Nicole Holofcener reveals the subtleties of relationships in Please Give—a story of love, guilt, and humanity. When Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt), a Manhattan married couple with an estate-sale furniture store buy their neighbor’s apartment, they need to wait for the occupant, Andra (Ann Guilbert), to actually die before they can tear down the walls to expand their home. An impromptu birthday dinner for Andra and her grown granddaughters (Amanda Peet and Rebecca Hall) plants the seeds for complicated relationships between the two families, in which all are faced with issues of their own morality and Kate and Alex confront their “liberal guilt,” which they’ve been at pains to navigate.

From the inbred freaks of The Hills Have Eyes to the cannibalistic rednecks of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the hillbilly murderer is a familiar archetype of the horror genre.But what if instead of being the killer, the hillbilly was actually the good guy for once? This role reversal is the jokey premise of Eli Craig’s feature film debut, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, a satirical take on horror movies that pits two bumbling rednecks against a pack of mean-spirited college kids.

Adrian Grenier, the charming and exceptionally photogenic leading man on HBO’s Entourage, has made a living both on and off the screen as a paparazzi darling. But after being accosted and admittedly bemused by the relentless camera of 13-year-old Austin Visschedyk, Grenier decided to turn the tables on the star-shooting youth and find out what makes a true paparazzo click. His second documentary, Teenage Paparazzo, was the result, and even Grenier was surprised by the journey he and Austin took together.

Have you seen a Duplass brother yet? If not, give it a minute. The writing/directing duo of The Puffy Chair and Baghead (Sundance 2008) will be a presence not only via their new film Cyrus but are exec producers of Bryan Poyser’s Lovers of Hate. Mark also executive-produced Bass Ackwards and The Freebie.