The Sundance Film Festival announced today their short film selections for the 2009 festival which runs January 15-25 in Park City, Utah. Animation is well-represented this year with nine American shorts and ten international shorts in competition. This is in addition to the festival’s opening night film which is also animated: Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max. This is the feature debut of Elliot, who won an Oscar for his clay-animated short Harvie Krumpet. It is described as the “tale of two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York. The story is based on the director’s own pen-friendship that has also lasted over twenty years.”

Among the animated shorts, the sentimental favorite at Cartoon Brew headquarters is Dominic Bisignano’s From Burger It Came. That’s because we chose this film to be featured in episode 7 of Cartoon Brew TV. We’ve removed it temporarily at the filmmaker’s request, so he can comply with Sundance regulations, but it’ll be back up shortly. Also congrats to Cartoon Brew Guest Brewer PES whose short film Western Spaghetti is also in competition.

A complete list of the nineteen animated shorts in competition can be found after the jump.

U.S. Animated Shorts
Dear Beautiful (Director: Roland Becerra)
Field Notes From Dimension X: Oasis (Director: Carson Mell)
From Burger It Came (Director: Dominic Bisignano)
Hot Dog (Director: Bill Plympton)
I Am So Proud Of You (Director: Don Hertzfeldt)
I Live In The Woods (Director: Max Winston)
Joel Stein’s Completely Unfabricated Adventures (Director: Walter Robot)
Western Spaghetti (Director: PES)
The Yellow Bird (Director: Tom Schroeder)

International Animated Shorts
Cattle Call / Canada (Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Rankin, Mike Maryniuk)
A Film from My Parish:6 Farms / Ireland (Director: Tony Donoghue)
hear, earth, heart / France (Director: Yi Zhou)
John and Karen / UK (Director: Matthew Walker)
Keith Reynolds can’t make it tonight / UK (Director: Felix Massie)
Lies / Sweden (Director: Jonas Odell)
Mister Cok / France (Director: Franck Dion)
Out of Control / Mexico (Director: Sofia Carrillo)e.
Skhizein / France (Director: Jérémy Clapin)
This Way Up / UK (Directors: Adam Foulkes, Alan Smith)