Over a hundred films will be screened during the 28th Sundance Film Festival, which starts today in Park City, Utah, and continues through January 29. More than the average number this year concern children, two are about pervasive hunger in North America, two (perhaps more) involve roadkill, and more than that are hesitant romances. Some have major stars, the majority feature comparative unknowns ripe for discovery.  And there is, of course, a Parker Posey movie — for what is Sundance without its indie queen?

Tomorrow, artinfo will preview some of the American Dramatic and Documentary features. Today, we look at six titles collectively indicative of Sundance’s eclecticism.

“RED  HOOK SUMMER”

(Premieres section)  Spike Lee’s first feature since his 2008 World War II film “Miracle at St. Anna” returns him to his informal “Chronicles of Brooklyn” series, which can be nothing but good news. A contemporary story with a backdrop of reverse migration caused by gentrification, it’s about a boy coming to stay with his Bible-bashing preacher grandfather during one of Lee’s customized fulminating heatwaves. Because Lee reprises Mookie, the pizza delivery boy he played in 1989’s explosive “Do the Right Thing,” it’s been mooted that this self-financed movie is a sequel. Lee says it’s not, but we can still hope for the visual fireworks and charged polemics that made Lee one of America’s most thrilling filmmakers.

“PUTIN”S KISS”

(World Documentary) Though it reportedly has a smallscreen quality, Danish director Lise Birk Pedersen's doc, four years in the making, makes a substantial statement about the realities of democracy in contemporary Russia. It follows the ups and downs of Masha Drokova, a telegenic, extremely ambitious Putinista who at 16 joined with the government-funded nationalistic youth movement, Nashi, famously kissed Putin on the cheek, and rose through the organization’s ranks to becomes its aggressively right-wing spokesperson, acquiring a car, a university scholarship, and a talk show en route. Her loyalty to the group, which is known for its racism, fascistic book-burning rallies, and physical attacks on enemies of the state, began to waver, however, when Vasily Yakemento, Nashi’s founder, humiliated her at a rally that Pederson filmed. It further diminished as she befriended journalists antagonistic to Putin and President Medvedev’s regime, and especially when liberal blogger Oleg Kashin was nearly beaten to death. Some commentators have cast doubts on the sincerity of Drokova’s conversion, partly because some of the scenes in the film appear to have been staged, but whatever her current convictions are, her political (and personal) growth should make for a mesmerizing cautionary tale.

“WUTHERING HEIGHTS”

(Spotlight) Andrea Arnold, the British director of the grimly realistic “Red Road” and “Fish Tank,” has a special fascination for furious revenge, which is why her tackling of Cathy and Heathcliff’s brutalizing romance hews close to the spirit of Emily Brontë’s Gothic masterpiece. Arnold aligns their passionate, blighted love with the wildness of the Yorkshire moors, as stark and infested a terrain as the heath in “King Lear,” and peppers the terse exchanges with savage imprecations and the soundtrack with cacophonous nature — howling wind, rain, trees, dogs, insects. If the novel's Heathcliff is of indeterminate origin — it's speculated that he is a Gypsy, Lascar, or an American — Arnold has unambiguously cast black actors in the role, suggesting that he is a victim of racial bigotry rather than class prejudice. Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon wouldn’t believe it possible.

“VIOLETA WENT TO HEAVEN”

(World Dramatic) Violeta Parra was a mellow-voiced folk protest singer and ethnomusicologist — the leader of the New Chilean Song Movement — a resolute champion of the poor, a poet, painter, sculptor, ceramicist, embroiderer, and tapestry maker, in short a Renaissance woman and social activist nonpareil. She spread her influence to Western Europe, becoming the first Latin American artist to be shown at the Louvre, and twice toured the Soviet Union. She had a tragic family life and tempestuous love affairs, and shot herself to death at the age of 49 in 1967. The Chilean director Andrés Wood has made an impressionistic, non-linear biopic of this complex woman centering on what’s said to be a remarkable perfomance by Francisca Gavrilán as her legendary countrywoman. Hopefully, the film will have a life in North America beyond Sundance.

“WEST OF MEMPHIS”

(Documentary Premiere) A cottage industry of films has grown up around the case of the West Memphis Three — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr. — who were wrongly convicted as teenagers in 1994 for the murders of three eight-year-old boys in Arkansas. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s campaigning  “Paradise Lost” trilogy for HBO, the first part of which drew national attention to the case and the last of which aired January 12, is now followed by this high-profile Sundance entry; Atom Egoyan has announced a fictional version, “The Devil’s Knot,” which will depict the effect of the murders and the convictions on the community and star Reese Witherspoon as Pam Hobbs, the mother of one of the murdered boys. who grew to believe the convictions were wrong. Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley were released last August after entering so-called Alford guilty pleas that allow defendants to maintain their innocence.

Amy Berg’s new two-and-a-half documentary supposedly focuses on Echols and on the Three’s supporters (including celebrities), and it purportedly sheds light on a possible suspect and motive for the killings. The film was produced by two couples: Echols and his wife Lorri Davis, and Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, the husband-and-wife team behind “The Lord of the Rings” movies, who privately paid for DNA and forensic investigations to help free Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley. Berg was Oscar-nominated in 2006 for her first documentary, “Deliver Us From Evil,” about the Catholic Church’s determination to shield a priest who had raped dozens of children.

Berlinger meanwhile returns to Sundance with “UNDER AFRICAN SKIES” (Documentary Premieres), a 25^th-anniversary reflection on Paul Simon’s controversial decision to make “Graceland” with local musicians in South Africa; it includes footage of a reunion concert.