Quebec filmmakers in Slamdance lineup

Debutdramas by Quebec directors Charles Olivier-Michaud and Alexandre Franchi have earned spots in competition at the Slamdance Film Festival next January in Park City, Utah.

On Thursday, Slamdance organizers announced 10 narrative features and eight documentary films that will compete in the festival, billed as an alternative to the better-known Sundance Film Festival.

Onefilm with Canadian-Swiss backing made the documentary lineupRocksteady: The Roots of Reggae, by Swiss director Stascha Bader that pulls together the musicians of Jamaica's golden age of music. They get together in Kingston, Jamaica, with the assistance of Montreal producer and reggae expert Mos "Mossman" Raxlen.

Rocksteady will compete with U.S.-made documentaries by debut directors, including:

• William Burroughs: A Man Within by Yony Leyser.
• American Jihadist by Mark Claywell.
• Candyman by Costa Botes, about the inventor of Jelly Belly candies.

Olivier-Michaud's Snow and Ashes and Franchi's The Wild Hunt will compete in the narrative documentary competition.

Snow and Ashes is about a war correspondent who wakes from a coma in Quebec City after being injured in Eastern Europe. He discovers his photographer is missing and has to reconstruct what happened to attempt a rescue.

Montreal filmmaker Franchi's The Wild Hunt, which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, is about an elaborate role-playing game involving Celts and Vikings. Fantasy and reality clash when a man in search of his girlfriend enters the game andbreaks the rules by refusing to role play.

Other films in the narrative feature lineup are:

• Dark comedy The Scenesters by Todd Berger of the U.S.
• Horror film YellowBrickRoad by Jesse Hollandand Andy Mitton of the U.S.
• Futuristic drama One Hundred Mornings by Conor Horgan of Ireland.

More than 5,000 films were submitted for competition in the festival, which last year launched the sleeper hit Paranormal Activity.

The festival will also feature the world premier of Steven Soderbergh's And Everything Is Going Fine, which documents the life and work of the late performance artist Spaulding Gray.

The Slamdance Festival runs Jan. 21-28 in Park City, Utah.