Sundance Film Festival Podcasts

(1992) Luke is a gay hustler. Jon is a movie critic. Both are HIV positive. They go on a hedonistic, dangerous journey, their motto "Fuck the world."

"Phoebe in Wonderland" is the fantastical tale of a little girl (Elle Fanning) who won't - or can`t - follow the rules. Confounded by her clashes with the rule-obsessed world around her, Phoebe seeks enlightenment from her unconventional drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson), even as her brilliant but anguished mother (Felicity Huffman) looks to Phoebe herself for inspiration.

In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs? "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" is the journey of director and powerlifter Christopher Bell, who explores one of America's most debated ethical and political gray areas, in an effort to understand why he and his two brothers became members of the steroid-subculture while seeking their American dream.

"An American Soldier" follows one of the most successful Army recruiters working in America, Sergeant First Class Clay Usie. Shot in verite style, the film captures Sgt. Usie's day-to-day life -- almost entirely dedicated to his mission of finding new soldiers in his hometown of Houma, Louisiana.

When Dominican-born pitcher Miguel "Sugar" Santos gets his break to come to the United States to play baseball, he finds himself in small-town Iowa, struggling to prove himself on the mound while adapting to a new language and culture.

In 2007 Mobile , Alabama , Mardi Gras is celebrated...and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether.

"Filmmaker Katrina Browne discovers that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine cousins retrace the Triangle Trade from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba, uncovering the North's dreadful secret and gaining a powerful new perspective on the black/white divide."

"American Teen" intimately captures the lives of four teenagers in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. Through cinema verite footage, interviews, and animation, it presents a candid portrait of being seventeen. Filming daily for ten months, filmmaker Nanette Burstein developed a remarkably close rapport with her subjects. The result is a film that goes beyond the stereotypes of high school to render complex young people trying to find their way into adulthood.

America may be on the brink of a financial meltdown. "I.O.U.S.A." is a documentary film which examines the nation's current fiscal condition and explores ways to avoid an economic disaster.

As previously done in their last film "The Puffy Chair," the Duplass Brothers explore the minutiae of relationship dynamics in this in-depth study of a group of desperate actor friends. And a bag. And a head.

From Oscar-nominated director Alex Gibney comes "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson." Fueled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true "free lance": goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity and a steel-eyed conviction for writing wrongs. The film is entirely narrated by the words of Thompson himself -- from his letters, articles, manuscripts and books -- and is read - on camera and off, by Johnny Depp.

Adapted from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk ("Fight Club"), "Choke" is a powerful and hilarious film about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, the terrors of aging, and the dark underbelly of Colonial theme parks.

A single mother and her embattled son struggle to subsist in a small Mississippi Delta township. An act of violence thrusts them into the world of an emotionally devastated highway store owner, awakening the fury of a bitter and longstanding conflict.

Set on the US-Canadian border, "Frozen River" tells the story of Ray Eddy, a desperate trailer mom, who takes up smuggling illegal immigrants when she comes across Lila Littlewolf, a Mohawk smuggler. Ignoring the danger, the two women begin a spree of run illegal immigrants into New York State by driving them across the frozen St. Lawrence River in the trunk of a Dodge Spirit. The money is good so long as the ice holds...

Shot in the war zones of the DR Congo, this film breaks the silence surrounding thousands of women and girls who have been kidnapped, raped and tortured in an intractable civil war. The filmmaker, herself a survivor of gang rape, talks with activists, peacekeepers, physicians and with the rapists themselves. She travels to remote villages to meet rape survivors who have been shamed and abandoned, providing a piercing, intimate look into the horror, struggle and ultimate grace of their lives.