Sundance London confirms 14 UK premieres including Liberal Arts, The House I Live In

The 14 narrative features and documentaries confirmed so far are:

• 2 Days In New York, dir. Julie Delpy
• Chasing Ice, dir. Jeff Orlowski
• Filly Brown, dirs. Youssef Delara, Michael D. Olmos
• Finding North, dirs. Kristi Jacobson, Lori Silverbush
• For Ellen, dir. So Yong Kim
• The House I Live In, dir. Eugene Jarecki
• Liberal Arts, dir. Josh Radnor
• LUV, dir. Sheldon Candis
• Nobody Walks, dir. Ry Russo-Young
• An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, dir. Terence Nance
• The Queen of Versailles, dir. Lauren Greenfield
• Safety Not Guaranteed, dir. Colin Trevorrow
• Shut Up And Play The Hits, dir Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace
• Under African Skies, dir. Joe Berlinger

All are UK premieres of films that recently screened at the January edition of Sundance in Park City, Utah. That crop represents several Sundance prize winners, including US documentary grand jury prize winner The House I Live In; special jury producing award winner Nobody Walks; US documentary directing winner The Queen of Versailles; Waldo Salt screenwriting winner Safety Not Guaranteed; and US documentary cinematography winner Chasing Ice.

The four-day event, which also features a number of musical performances from the likes of Placebo and Tricky, is targeted at UK consumers.

Sundance Director of Programming Trevor Groth noted: “We wanted people to see a nice cross section of what we showcase at the festival.” The projects are primarily American independents, and several of them have ties to the music world, such as Common-starring drama LUV, Paul Simon project Under African Skies and LCD Soundsystem doc Shut Up And Play The Hits.

Groth added that the industry would be invited, but not be the focus of this inaugural event. “2 Days in New York and Liberal Arts already have UK distributors so we are working with them [Network and Revolver/Picturehouse respectively]. If films play well there to a UK audience, and business happens afterwards, that’s great. But we’re more consumer-led,” he said.

Screenings will be held at five cinemas at the Cineworld O2. Shorts programmes and special screenings will be added in coming weeks.

Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper noted that most of the filmmakers would be in attendance for Q&As. “There will be a whole delegation,” he said.

Cooper said he wasn’t wary of this smaller consumer event diluting the brand of the larger Sundance festival in January. “It can only help awareness,” he added.

Plans for 2013 and beyond will be evaluated once this year’s edition has finished. Cooper noted: “We’re really looking forward to this festival and evaluating it after this festival, and then talking about continuing it past this year.”

Groth added that the late April event was good timing for the organisers despite just coming off the January behemoth. “For us to we have a lot of energy coming off the January festival, we can use that going into Sundance London.”

As previously reported, the festival will open with An Evening With Robert Redford and T Bone Burnett.