Kurt Cobain Documentary Set to Premiere at Sundance

Nirvana

The upcoming Kurt Cobain documentary, Montage of Heck, will premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Variety reports. The portrait of the late Nirvana singer-guitarist will be joining a number of other documentaries and features, including Liz Garbus’ study of Nina Simone, What Happened, Miss Simone?, and I Am Michael, a new drama staring James Franco as Michael Glatze, a gay-rights activist who renounced his homosexuality and became a minister.

I Am Michael is one of a handful of films in both the feature and documentary categories grappling with religion. It joins Alex Gibney’s sure-to-be controversial look at Scientology, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (which will later air on HBO) and Prophet’s Prey, Amy Berg’s examination of Warren Jeffs, the former president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. On a lighter note, Napoleon Dynamite mastermind Jared Hess will return to Sundance with Don Verdean, a comedy about a Biblical archaeologist who has to weasel his way out of a futile dig for relics (the cast includes Sam Rockwell, Amy Ryan, Danny McBride, Leslie Bibb, Jemaine Clement and Will Forte).

Also likely to make a splash at Sundance is The End of the Tour, which finds Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg portraying David Foster Wallace and Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky during their five-day long road trip/interview in 1996. Director John Crowley’s adaptation of Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn is a heart-breaking romantic drama about an Irish-American immigrant, while Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman’s Ten Thousand Saints tell the story of three children coming of age in New York City’s East Village during the tumultuous Eighties.

Other documentaries premiering at Sundance include: Tig, about the the life of comedian Tig Notaro following her breast cancer diagnosis; Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, which chronicles the rise and fall of the legendary humor magazine; and Oscar-nominee Kirby Dick’s The Hunting Ground, which examines the crisis of rape on college campuses.

A full list of films premiering at this year’s festival is available on the Sundance website, along with those competing in the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary categories. This year’s Sundance Film Festival will take place between January 22nd and February 1st in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah