Documentaries gain starring role

As that old saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. But when it comes to filmmaking these days, I'd argue that truth is often more watchable than fiction.

Here's to documentary and nonfiction filmmaking.

Michael Moore's controversial opinion piece about the Bush administration, "Fahrenheit 9/11," grossed $119 million, becoming the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, and proving that such films can be as successful as their fictional counterparts. (The film's U.S. box-office grosses place it at No. 16 for the year, above such hits as "Dodgeball" and "The Grudge.")

And Morgan Spurlock's fast-food cautionary tale "Super Size Me" broke into the Top 150 with $11 million and clearly influenced the way chain restaurants offer meal portions and meal selections.

The latter film debuted at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, as did the acclaimed documentaries "Riding Giants," "The Control Room," "Born Into Brothels" and "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster."

The 2005 Sundance Film Festival starts on Thursday and runs through Jan. 30 in a variety of locations in Park City and Salt Lake City, as well as Ogden and the Sundance Village in Provo Canyon, and there are plenty of documentaries on hand.

In fact, Sundance has added a new World Cinema Documentary Competition, joining the regular Documentary Competition. That means there are a grand total of 28 nonfiction features competing for audience and grand-jury awards.

According to festival director Geoff Gilmore, the new category was added because of increased demand. "Each year the audiences continue to grow for our documentary screenings, and some of them sell out even faster than the fictional features. I attribute that to the continuing high quality of the documentaries being entered."

This year's festival should be no different. There is already positive buzz surrounding "Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire," about a former U.N. commander who tried to bring an end to the Rwandan civil war.

And among those I'm eager to see are "Murderball," about quadriplegic athletes who play wheelchair rugby, and "New York Doll," a profile of rock musician and LDS Church convert Arthur "Killer" Kane, a film directed by Utahn Greg Whiteley.

And I'm always keen to see anything from German filmmaker Werner Herzog, who is bringing his latest, "Grizzly Man," about the late animal activists Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who were killed by one of the animals they were studying in 2003.