True story: Documentaries rule at Sundance

PARK CITY — I don't think it's any accident that the films embraced by audiences at this year's Sundance Film Festival weren't the usual quirky comedies and dysfunctional relationship dramas, but rather those formerly humble vessels known as documentaries.

At a time when people are feeling lied to — election season plus an unpopular war will do that — truth-telling has an undeniable appeal.

But it's more than that.

A new wave of directors, inspired by the ones who did so much to push the bar forward in the 1990s, have brought Hollywood production values, powerful real-life storytelling and crowd-pleasing features — like, oh, humor — to what was once a reliable and even predictable video form.

It was not that long ago that documentaries aimed at either the head or the heart. But the films that got Sundance filmgoers talking this month did both.

Just as Michael Moore, Errol Morris and the makers of "Hoop Dreams" pushed their audiences to demand more of nonfiction film, the same will be said of documentaries like the ones I saw this week.

Here now, my five favorites from Sundance 2008's documentary competition. Many will be on TV this year, and on DVD.

"Bigger, Stronger, Faster"

Director Christopher Bell has been obsessed with muscle-bound athletes and bodybuilders his whole life.

His two brothers went even further, pumping steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs into their bodies in hopes of looking like their heroes, men with names like Arnold and Hulk who preached physical fitness and vitamin-taking but kept their steroid use quiet.

Bell wondered: Why is American society so hard on steroid users when it condones cheating and shortcut-taking in so many other parts of life?

It could've been an interesting little investigative piece. Instead, the first-time filmmaker turned the camera on his own family, and the result is a brutally honest look at a culture desperate to get ahead at any cost — and just as desperate to look like they won fair and square.

With its blistering pace, clever use of old video footage (for instance, to demonstrate how Gov. Schwarzenegger has quietly distanced himself from his onetime openness about taking 'roids) and totally relatable characters, "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" will have you talking both about the Bell family and America's drug denial long after the lights go up. You might say it's a traditional documentary ... on steroids!