TORONTO — Canadian talent figures prominently at this year’s Sundance festival, with Sarah Polley, Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds among those starring in films set to unspool at the annual indie showcase.
The revered festival, which kicks off Thursday in scenic Park City, Utah, will also feature the latest from Hollywood heavyweights including Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ben Affleck, but Canadian films are generating some chatter.
The Canada/France sci-fi horror flick Splice, executive-produced by Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro, stars Polley and Adrien Brody as radical geneticists who create a terrifying new creature.
The project is a radical change in direction from the last film Polley brought to Sundance — the tender love story Away From Her, about an elderly couple dealing with Alzheimer’s. Back then, Polley arrived at the fest as a first-time feature film director, and buzz from her debut paved the way for a year of accolades, culminating with an Oscar nomination fin 2008.
Novice talent this year includes Adriana Maggs, whose coming-of-age tale Grown-Up Movie Star is one of 14 films to compete in the international feature section.
The native of Corner Brook, N.L., says the fest is an influential platform for emerging filmmakers looking to make their mark, pointing to the meteoric success that Precious enjoyed since debuting at Sundance.
“They’re getting back to that kind of real indie film,” Maggs says of Sundance’s focus.
“The success of (Precious) showed them that they were doing the right thing to (focus on) those real, soul-wrenching human stories. Hopefully that’s part of the reason why (my) film got in, because it’s dealing with some of those honest, brutal truths that not everyone wants to talk about.”
Many Canadians appear in the fest’s Park City at Midnight section, a showcase of horror and wild comedies.
In addition to Splice, films include the U.K./Canada co-production Tucker & Dale vs. Evil,” about redneck pals who are mistaken for killers, and the Canadian horror 7 Days (Les 7 jours du Talion), about a doctor bent on avenging his daughter’s rape and murder.
Meanwhile, Reynolds is said to be the only person on screen throughout much of Buried, a Spain/U.S. co-production about a civilian contractor in Iraq who is kidnapped and buried alive.