Literary trends to watch out for at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Today, the Sundance Film Festival starts in Utah, kicking off the domestic season for indie film.

This year’s line-up is (happily!) full of original scripts. And new work from the likes of Rachel Lambert, Stephanie Ahn, and writer-directors Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz is very worth celebrating. But we also love a little literary news.

Here are the all of the adaptations and bookish trends to look out for, if you’re westbound. (Or just curious.)

From See You When I See You.

The author as fictional subject is having a moment. 

Both Run Amok and The Musical, competing in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, center an idealistic librettist and a frustrated playwright, respectively. Though these heroes are navigating very different crises.

In the premiere line-up, Jay Duplass’ See You When I See You, adapted from Adam Cayton-Holland’s Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-Comic Memoir, follows a comedy writer battling PTSD in the wake of his sister’s death.

And on the absurdest end of the spectrum, John Wilson’s The History of Concrete—also in premieres—follows a filmmaker who sets out to apply a Hallmark movie formula to a documentary about…concrete. So many writers, so many neuroses.

Salman Rushdie.

See also: the real live writer, in crisis.

Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie will premiere in this year’s festival. The alarming but ultimately triumphant doc is inspired by Rushdie’s memoir of the same name.

Troublemaker, a historical documentary from Antoine Fuqua, draws on Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. 

And elsewhere, viewers drawn to writers in dire straits can find Dawn Porter’s When a Witness Recants. This doc trails author Ta-Nehisi Coates as he reports on three wrongfully convicted teenagers who’ve been forced to serve decades in prison for a murder they didn’t commit.

Gideon Adlon and Rachel Kaly in Worried.

Your favorite internet novel is coming to the small screen.

Certain lucky Sundancers will get to preview the pilot of a hot adaptation. Alexandra Tanner’s Worry is soon headed to a laptop near you, under the direction of vetted satirist Nicole Holofcener.

Now appearing in past tense, the Worried pilot introduces Jules and Poppy, along with a crackerjack cast of comedians. Prepare to meet the weirdest sister roommates.

Iona Bell in Fing! 

Fing! fans, rejoice.

In other adaptation news, a certain “fantastical furball friend” best known to British children is also premiering in Utah.

David Walliams’ story of the Meek family and the whimsical monster that bedevils them is now a family film, thanks to Taika Waititi and director Jeffrey Walker.

Olivia Colman in Wicker.

Peter Dinklage is “the sly basketmaker” in an Ursula Wills adaptation.

Sort of enough said, right? But this adaptation comes from an Ursula Wills short called “The Wicker Husband.” In Wicker (film edition), Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård fill out the cast of what W is calling an “unorthodox love story.” I’m seated.

Other adaptations at this year’s fest include: Time and Water, based on Andri Snær Magnason’s poetic meditation, On Time and Water; the short Living with a Visionary, based on the poet John Matthias’ memoirs; and appearing in the revival tent, cult favorite Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, which was adapted from Scott Heim’s psychosexual 90s drama of the same name.

Silver lining, for the FOMO-ridden? For those of us coast-bound, tickets are still on sale for many online screenings.

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