The cinema world's spotlight is turning to Park City, Utah, as the 2008 Sundance Film Festival gets underway Thursday.

The annual showcase for U.S. and international independent films opens Thursday evening with the world premiere of In Bruges, a tale of two London hit men ordered to take some time off in Belgium.

Triage director Patrick Reed praised Sundance as 'an opportunity to spread the word and share the message' about his subject, humanitiarian Dr. James Orbinski.
(CBC)

With a cast that includes Ralph Fiennes and Colin Farrell, the film is also the feature directorial debut of award-winning playwright Martin McDonagh.

From there, a wide range of films is set to unspool over the celebrity-packed festival's 11 days. A host of Canadian projects to be featured include Smile, a new short from past Sundance Jury Prize-winner Julia Kwan; Madame Tutli-Putli, the much-honoured animated tale created by Montreal-based artists Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski; and Otto; or Up With Dead People, a new film from writer, photographer and filmmaker Bruce La Bruce.

Thought-provoking Canadian documentaries have fared well at Sundance in the past, and this year's homegrown offerings at the increasingly prominent U.S. festival include Up the Yangtze, The Women of Brukman and Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma.

Though he said it might be easy to become cynical about the celebrity-focused aspect of Sundance, Triage director Patrick Reed praised the festival as a means to share the story of Orbinski, the former head of humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders.

"[Triage is] not an activist film made for an activist audience. The whole idea is to engage the world," Reed told CBC News on Thursday.

"You've got to use it as an opportunity to spread the word and share the message, and hopefully the film will find an audience."

Among the prominent films slated for screening at Sundance are:

• Be Kind Rewind, the latest from Michel Gondry is a comedy about a video store owner forced to film remakes of popular movies after his friend unintentionally erases all his tapes.
  
• The Deal, about a Hollywood producer who cons a major studio into financing a $100-million film.
  
• Incendiary, based on the 2005 novel by Chris Cleave, is a drama about a woman whose husband and son are among those killed in a suicide bombing at a soccer match in London.
  
• A Raisin in the Sun, a new film adaptation of the recent Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry's classic play, starring Sean Combs, Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald.
  
• U2 3D, a three-dimensional film combining footage shot at seven different shows on the Irish band's Vertigo world tour.
  
• The Great Buck Howard, a Tom Hanks production (Hanks produced and stars in the film) about a law school dropout turned assistant to a struggling magician attempting a comeback.

Altogether, organizers will screen 121 feature-length films, closing with Bernard Shakey's CSNY Déjà Vu, which follows Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young on the band's politically charged Freedom of Speech tour in 2006.

Organizers will hand out the event's awards at a ceremony on Jan. 26, a day before the festival's official end.

Actors Sandra Oh, Marcia Gay Harden, Diego Luna and Alan Alda as well as directors Jason Reitman, Mary Harron, and Quentin Tarantino are among the judges set to pick this year's award winners.