Sundance 2015: Festival announces genre and experimental slates

A documentary-horror movie about sleep paralysis, an experimental anthology of minute-long shorts, and new works starring Keanu Reeves, Jack O’Connell and Kevin Bacon are among the latest additions to next year’s Sundance Film Festival, organizers announced Thursday.

Films in the Park City at Midnight program, which center on genre films and raunch comedies, include Jon Watts’ “Cop Car,” featuring Bacon in a story about a pair of 10-year-olds who steal an abandoned police vehicle; Eli Roth’s “Knock Knock,” starring Reeves as a married man whose life is turned upside down by two beautiful young women; and “The Nightmare,” Rodney Ascher’s nonfiction movie about the phenomenon of sleep paralysis.

The festival has selected eight films for the Midnight program, nine for its Spotlight section, and six for New Frontier, focused on experimental works. The latter section also includes 13 art installations.

The selections join the U.S. and world dramatic and documentary competition films announced Wednesday. The fest’s narrative and nonfiction premieres will be unveiled Monday. Considered the nation’s top launching pad for movies made outside the studio system, Sundance runs Jan. 22 to Feb. 1 in and around Park City, Utah.

The New Frontier films include Doug Aitken’s “Station to Station,” comprising 60 individual one-minute shorts; Matthew Bate’s “Sam Klemke’s Time Machine,” a portrait of a real-life man who has chronicled 50 years of his own life; and Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s “The Forbidden Room,” about a group of bandits, soldiers and surgeons.

The Spotlight movies, some of which are playing in the United States for the first time, are Yann Demange’s period soldier drama “‘71,” starring “Unbroken’s” O’Connell; Ramin Bahrani’s real estate commentary “99 Homes,” starring Andrew Garfield; Mia Hansen-Love’s French drama “Eden” with Greta Gerwig; and Damian Szifron’s oddball anthology “Wild Tales.”

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