Very, very early tomorrow morning, the Spout team will decamp for Park City, Utah, where we will spend the next week plus covering the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. I hope to see somewhere between 20-30 films before coming back to New York, but here’s a look at five of the titles in competition that I’m most excited about. Tomorrow, I’ll post about the films in the Spectrum, Premieres and Midnight sidebars that I can’t wait to see.

American Teen (directed by Nanette Burstein. Documentary Competition)

Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “American Teen intimately follows the lives of four teenagers in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. Using cinema vérité footage, interviews, and animation, it presents a candid portrait of being 17 and all that goes with it. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, the experimentation with sex and alcohol, the parental pressures, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future.”

Why I’m Interested: It’s no secret that the media climate of My Super Sweet 16, Gossip Girl and the masterfully manipulative Laguna Beach is in need of a serious real-world corrective. I hope Burstein (who was nominated for an Oscar for On the Ropes, and whose last theatrical release was the cheekily worshipful Robert Evans doc The Kid Stays in the Picture) has managed it.

Pretty Bird (directed by Paul Schneider. Dramatic Competition)

Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “Curtis Prentiss (Billy Crudup) is the archetypal American dreamer: the rainmaker. He arrives in town with big ideas, a fervent sales pitch, and a set of blueprints in hand. Curtis also has a wealthy old acquaintance who’s susceptible to his incantations. He finds, by chance, an out-of-work aerospace engineer (Paul Giamatti), whom he recruits with a vision of building “the rocket belt,” a personalized flying machine. They embark on their mutual missions—to raise capital and solve the conundrum of flight—but their relationship quickly deteriorates. When unexpectedly they find success, everything really goes out of control, and a struggle begins that will change their lives.”

Why I’m Interested: I know. It sounds really … Sundancey. And I’m always skeptical of any Sundance title with more than one gold-standard indie star. But I’m a huge, huge, huge fan of the last Sundance film that Schneider had a hand in crafting (David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls), so I’m crossing my fingers that there’s something beyond the quirk factor here.

Trouble the Water (directed by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin. Documentary Competition)

Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “How is it that Hurricane Katrina managed to revolutionize American attitudes about the environment, but somehow the very people most devastated by the storm have become refugees in their own country, and their experiences have been all but forgotten? In Trouble the Water, this voiceless population becomes vibrantly human as documentarians Tia Lessin and Carl Deal engage with native New Orleans filmmaker and musician Kimberly and her husband, Scott, to create a powerful autobiographical account of the effect Katrina had, and continues to have, on the lives of the people of New Orleans.”

Why I’m Interested: As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit of a sucker for Katrina movies, and I’m actually a bit amazed that the only film to tackle this subject to see any significant mainstream attention has been Spike Lee’s comprehensive but not particularly groundbreaking When the Levees Broke. This one’s got an interesting pedigree: co-produced by Danny Glover and Amir Bar Lev, who directed his own New Orleans film before last year’s My Kid Could Paint That.

Derek (directed by Isaac Julien. World Cinema Documentary Competition)

Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “Derek is a glorious, yet fitting, remembrance of one of independent film’s greatest treasures, Derek Jarman. It is lovingly crafted by filmmaker and friend Isaac Julian, who assembles a moving collage of rare home movies, film clips, and interviews, and a cinematic love letter from actress Tilda Swinton. Her input serves as the poetic overlay telling the whole truth about the life Jarman led, and the cultural abyss left by his absence.”

Why I’m Interested: Irksome elements of the synopsis aside––how are “glorious” and “fitting” contradictions to the extent that they need to be bridged with a “yet”?––I’m fascinated by Derek Jarman, and Tilda Swinton’s involvement is almost always a good thing. I wrote in depth about Derek and Jarman here.

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures (directed by Chris Wiatt. World Cinema Documentary Competition)

Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “When scraggly, endearingly hapless filmmaker Chris Waitt gets dumped by his girlfriend–the last in a long line of disastrous affairs–he resolves to find out what exactly is wrong with him. Why have all his relationships ended in acrimony or indifference? What will it take for him to dodge everlasting loneliness?”

Why I’m Interested: It’s like Sherman’s March, but British, and 1/3 as long, and seemingly not at all concerned with vague parallels to 19th century history! What’s not to like?

Other competition films that the Spout team plans to see/review: Blue Eyelids, Up The Yangtze, An American Soldier, The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, The Wackness, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, Downloading Nancy, Stranded, Choke, Sugar, The Order of Myths, Strangers.