Filed under: Documentaries, Sundance Film Festival, Columns, Cinematical
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With a stunning amount of deals made at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, you’re likely looking forward to a ton of great, new independent films over the course of the next year. But how many of them are documentaries? How many non-fiction films are even coming out of the fest with distribution? How many of those have either commercial or awards prospects? And overall how did this year’s crop of docs compare to last year’s?
First, let me address the distribution thing. Of the 35 or so Sundance pickups, less than ten were for docs. That doesn’t count the two major remake deals, through which HBO will be adapting the so-so Irish boxing film ‘Knuckle’](Knuckle (2011) - Movie | Moviefone) for a dramatic series and Fox Searchlight will fictionalize the terrific, multifaceted ‘Bengali Detective’](A Detective from Bengal (2011) - Movie | Moviefone) for what’s sure to be a quirkier sort of narrative feature focused more on the characters’ dance contest aspirations and meant to cash-in on the studio’s prior success with ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’