Sundance Selects

CHICAGO – The sullen little boy is always on the run. His red shirt and jacket cause him to resemble a crimson blur against the green and gray landscape of his Belgian town. He believes that there must be an explanation for why his absent father has left him in a state-run youth farm, and is determined to track him down. Consumed with confusion and rage, the boy has no choice but to keep moving toward a destination that may not exist.

CHICAGO – Few semi-autobiographical explorations of high-stakes drama have ever been as playfully exuberant as Valérie Donzelli’s “Declaration of War.” Like Jonathan Levine and Will Reiser’s equally sublime “50/50,” this film is based directly on the real-life experiences of people who faced a cancer diagnosis and lived to tell the tale. Both pictures resist mawkish sentiment while delving into the rich textures and eccentricities of life.

CHICAGO – Errol Morris’s “Tabloid” is the sort of documentary so probing and inquisitive that it can’t help questioning its own validity. It’s a story about storytelling, a documentary that deconstructs the artifice of documentary filmmaking and a nonfiction narrative that may very well be comprised entirely of fiction. Such boundless ambition and self-reflexive irony is only typical of Morris, who is surely one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of the medium.

CHICAGO – At the heart of Pierre Thoretton’s melancholy documentary is a story of lost love, lost art, and the ever-present aura they leave behind. Pierre Bergé is often credited as co-founder of the couture house headed by world famous designer Yves Saint Laurent. Yet “L’amour Fou” allows Bergé to set the record straight on just how large a role he played in Saint Laurent’s phenomenal success.