When the prestigious Sundance Film Festival gets underway in Park City, UT Jan. 15-25, Canada will be well represented with 13 films already selected, not including selections for the Shorts program.

Screening in the Premieres program will be The Saddest Music in the World from director Guy Maddin and the Canada/U.K. copro Touch of Pink, directed by Ian Iqbal Rashid.

Saddest Music, starring Isabella Rossellini and Mark McKinney (Kids in the Hall), is set in Winnipeg during the Depression and played to very strong reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. It was coproduced by Winnipeg prodco Buffalo Gal Pictures and Toronto’s Rhombus Media.

Touch of Pink stars Kyle MacLachlan (Blue Velvet) and Jimi Mistry (East is East), who plays a gay South Asian whose mother makes a surprise visit and announces it’s time for him to find a nice South Asian girl and get married. Jennifer Kawaja and Julia Sereny of Toronto’s Sienna Films (Marion Bridge) produced the feature with Martin Pope of the U.K.’s Martin Pope Productions.

Three first-time Canadian filmmakers will have their films featured in the World Cinema program. Among them is Jean-Francois Pouliot’s La Grande seduction, which brought in $6.5 million at the Quebec box office, making it the second highest-grossing homegrown film in Quebec box-office history.

Federico Hidalgo’s A Silent Love, produced by Pascal Maeder of Montreal prodco Atopia, will also screen in the World Cinema program, as will G.B. Yates’ Seven Times Lucky, shot in Winnipeg last winter with Buffalo Gal producer Liz Jarvis.

Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar’s The Corporation will screen in the documentary program. The film won a special jury prize at the 2003 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.

The Sundance Native Forum will include Alanis Obomsawin’s Our Nationhood, which looks at Mi’gmaq resistance against federal and provincial governments in Listiguj, QC, in an effort to protect the natural resources on Mi’gmaq land. Obomsawin wrote, produced and directed the feature doc.

In addition, six short documentaries from Canada will also screen in Sundance’s showcase of Aboriginal films. They are Spin by Danis Goulet, If the Weather Permits by Elisapie Issac, In Shadow by Shirley Cheechoo, Might of the Starchaser by Joseph Lazare, Prayer for a Good Day by Zoe Leigh Hopkins and The Shirt by Shelley Niro.

Telefilm Canada will be at the festival with its new venture the Canadian Lounge, an initiative targeted at supporting marketing and sales activities at the festival.

-www.sundance.org