Sundance 2012: the 20 films to look out for – in pictures

2 Days in New York: Director Julie Delpy's follow up to 2 Days in Paris. This sees Marion (Delpy) settled happily in New York with her hipster boyfriend, Mingus (Chris Rock). Life's a sunny blur of whole foods and New Yorker subscriptions until Marion's eccentric family pay a visit with an ex-boyfriend in tow ... Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

Bachelorette: Kirsten Dunst (pictured with Isla Fisher and Lizzy Caplan) stars as a cussin', boozin' bridesmaid in playwright Leslye Headland's adaptation of her Broadway hit. The concept may sound familiar, but this - steeped in jealousy, gluttony and drug addiction - is a grubbier affair than Kristen Wiig and co could have imagined. Bridesmaids threw the bouquet, Bachelorette stamps it into the dirt. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

L: More bonkers back and forth from the Greco-weirdo school that brought you Dogtooth. Co-written by Efthymis Filippou (who wrote Giorgos Lanthimos's Oscar-nominated debut and the screenplay for his follow-up, Alps), L follows a man who lives in his car, makes honey deliveries and dreams of a friend who was killed when a hunter mistook him for a bear. Now THAT's what Drive was missing ... Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

Arbitrage: The cinematic financial crisis continues. It's the eve of his 60th birthday and billionaire hedge fund magnate Robert Miller (Richard Gere, pictured with Brit Marling) is frantically trying to hide the fraudulent deals that shuttled him into the realm of the super rich. Susan Sarandon and Tim Roth buy low and sell high alongside Gere and Marling in Nicholas Jarecki's debut. Photograph: Myles Aronowitz/Sundance film festival

Bones Brigade: An Autobiography: Dogtown and Z-Boys director Stacy Peralta takes another kerb's-eye view of the birth and growth of the LA skateboarding scene. Brigade alumni, including Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero and Tommy Guerrero, are on hand to explain how hundreds of scraped knees garnered millions of dollars. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

Lay the Favorite: Stephen Frears directs Rebecca Hall in a Vegas-set comedy drama about a stripper recruited by a gang of chiphounds to help them beat the city's casinos. Bruce Willis co-stars as Dink Heimowitz, a nerdy fifty-something who strikes up an improbable, but profitable, friendship with Hall. Photograph: PR

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry: Alison Klayman's documentary follows the celebrated artist over three years, from Ai's rise as a vocal critic of the Chinese government after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to his arrest in Beijing last year. Klayman's film, part funded by crowd-sourcing, discusses his growing status as a figurehead and brand for rebellion. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

Simon Killer: A college graduate (Brady Corbet) separates from his girlfriend and tries to escape his heartbreak by travelling to Paris, where his infatuation with a local prostitute forces him to dig up some buried secrets. Features a starring role for Corbet, who impressed in Lars von Trier's Melancholia, Michael Haneke's Funny Games remake and upcoming indie drama Martha Marcy May Marlene. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

Indie Game: The Movie: Documentary film-makers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky look at the game developers who've rejected the billion dollar franchises of conventional gaming to enter the no-to-low budget world of indie development. Interviewees include Super Meat Boy creators Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, Fez designer Phil Fish and Jonathan Blow, the creative genius behind the critically-adored meta-platformer Braid. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

Under African Skies: Documentary following Paul Simon as he returns to South Africa for a reunion concert celebrating 25 years of his Graceland album. Joe Berlinger, director of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, follows Simon as he reflects on the controversy caused by his decision to record in the country at the height of apartheid. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

Red Hook Summer: Spike Lee's latest film, apparently self-financed, is the story of a kid from Atlanta who is sent to spend the summer with his preacher uncle in Brooklyn, in the housing project of the title. The word is it's Lee in a lighter mood - maybe this will be in the same league as his fun nostalgic film, Crooklyn. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

LCD Soundsystem: Shut Up and Play the Hits: Funky, punky James Murphy and his dorky disco troupe gave dance music a hefty boot up the bum before disbanding in a shower of glitter last April. Shut Up and Play the Hits charts the band's final 48 hours, culminating in a final, sold-out show at Madison Square Gardens, and features an extended interview with Murphy on the nature of success and rock stardom. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

The Surrogate: A based-on-a-true-story drama about Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes), a journalist and publisher who was determined to live independently, despite being confined to an iron lung for much of his career after contracting polio as a boy. O'Brien's story was the subject of Jessica Yu's Oscar-winning documentary, which was released three years before his death in 1999. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

Shadow Dancer: Man on Wire director James Marsh's second move into fiction sees Andrea Riseborough play an IRA terrorist turned reluctant informant in this adaptation of Tom Bradby's acclaimed debut novel, set in 1970s Belfast. Gillian Anderson, Clive Owen and Domhnall Gleeson co-star. Photograph: Jonathan Hession/Sundance film festival

China Heavyweight: Director Yung Chang follows coach Qi Moxiang, an ageing fighter hoping for one last jab at the big time. Competition is fierce, as personal fortune and Olympic glory beckon for the few fighters that can escape rural poverty by slugging their way past China's state selectors. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

The Queen of Versailles: More money, more floorspace. Lauren Greenfield's documentary on billionaires Jackie and David Siegel's quest to build America's biggest house - 90,000 square foot of real estate inspired by Versailles. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

For Ellen: Paul Dano dons regulation rock'n'roll uniform (white face and vest, black heart and fingernails) to play Joby, a feckless musician who drives through the night to meet his ex-wife and fight for custody of his daughter. Korean-American producer/director So Yong Kim is behind the camera. Photograph: Carolyn Drake/Sundance film festival

Predisposed: Jesse Eisenberg, Melissa Leo and 30 Rock's Tracy Morgan sign up for group therapy in Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner's comedy about a piano prodigy (Eisenberg) who enlists his druggie mom's rehab buddies to help him get to an audition on time. Photograph: Jacob Hutchings/Sundance film festival

West Memphis: Peter Jackson produced this documentary on the West Memphis Three. Amy Berg - Oscar-nominated for Deliver Us From Evil - explores the popular support for the group, who were recently released after being imprisoned for murdering three eight-year-olds in 1994, despite a lack of evidence. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival

The Words: The festival closer sees Bradley Cooper take another step away from The Hangover into the sober territory of the Serious Actor. He plays Rory, an aspiring writer who comes a cropper after claiming another author's work as his own. Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek, Colombiana) and Olivia Wilde (Cowboys & Aliens, In Time) co-star. Photograph: Sundance film festival/Sundance film festival