A successful showing of Canadian films at the upcoming Sundance festival got better on Thursday with the announced selection of a fifth feature, Helen, in the non-competitive Spectrum category. The film joins author David Bezmozgis’ dramatic debut Victoria Day, the Igloolik Isuma production Before Tomorrow, the National Film Board copro Nollywood Babylon and comeback director Paul Saltzman’s Prom Night in Mississippi.

Helen stars Ashley Judd (De-Lovely, Kiss the Girls) as a clinically depressed psychiatrist who has to fight for her own mental health. Joining the non-singing, all-acting member of the Judd clan are Canadians Alberta Watson (Spanking the Monkey, The Sweet Hereafter) and David Hewlett (Stargate: Atlantis) and Croatian Goran Visnjic (ER, Welcome to Sarajevo).

British Columbia’s Insight Film Studios and Germany’s Egoli Tossell Film produced the intimate drama, which was written and directed by Sandra Nettelbeck and produced by Christine Haebler.

Haebler, who is working with Trish Dolman’s B.C. production company Screen Siren Pictures, has produced a mixed bag of independent films including Reg Harkema’s A Girl is a Girl, Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo and Gary Burns’ The Kitchen Party, as well as the award-winning TV series Terminal City. Among Haebler’s upcoming projects are The Last Row, a second collaboration with the Netherlands-based Kasander Film Company, with which she worked on Peter Greenaway’s festival hit Nightwatching, and a family drama, again starring Judd, based on the award-winning play Wawatay.

Nettlebeck’s biggest hit so far, Mostly Martha, also depicted an independent woman — in that case, a chef who unexpectedly has to take care of her niece when her sister dies. The film was remade in English as the Catherine Zeta-Jones/Aaron Eckhart charmer No Reservations.

The five Canadian features at Sundance are part of a selection of 118 chosen for the festival, which celebrates its silver anniversary this year. Festival director Geoffrey Gilmour’s observation that ‘storytelling is… crossing geographic boundaries, it’s crossing socioeconomic boundaries, it’s crossing cultural boundaries in some cases, and it’s generational,’ is reflected in Sundance’s Canadian choices. Canada’s two docs Nollywood Bound and Prom Night in Mississippi are about places and stories beyond our borders, while Helen is a German copro. Before Tomorrow is set in Nunavut and Victoria Day‘s protagonist is Russian-Canadian, who still speaks to his parents in their ancestral language.

Sundance returns to Park City, Utah from Jan. 15-25, 2009.