Sundance 2012: The 6 Faces to Watch

This story first appeared in the Jan. 27 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

our editor recommends

Sundance 2012: A Cautiously Optimistic Look at This Year's Market

Sundance 2012: 10 Films that will Sell and 3 Wild Cards that Might

Katie Aselton

Aselton's directorial debut, The Freebie, brought her positive attention when it screened at Sundance in 2010, but the 33-year-old's new thriller, Black Rock, is poised to show the broader range of an actress-director mostly known for comedy (Our Idiot Brother, FX's The League).

PHOTOS: Sundance 2012: 10 Buzzing Films That Will Sell

Ann Dowd

Dowd's performance in Compliance is one of the trickiest in the festival, that of a beleaguered fast-food manager whose detainment of a teenage counter girl at the request of a suspicious policeman leads her down a perilous and unexpected path. The return to Sundance of filmmaker Craig Zobel (2007's Great World of Sound), Compliance sets up the 54-year-old character actress (Garden State, The Notorious Bettie Page) for a breakout like that of Melissa Leo in the 2008 grand jury prize-winning Frozen River.

Benh Zeitlin

Buyers, sellers and programmers alike have been chattering about 29-year-old Zeitlin's competition debut, Beasts of the Southern Wild, a coming-of-age story about a 6-year-old girl living in a surreal rural South. A product of the Sundance Institute's directors lab, the movie spotlights a new filmmaker with a strikingly original -- and independent -- vision.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Although the 27-year-old actress has done her share of studio work (The Thing, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Final Destination 3), her raw performance in the competition film Smashed as a woman struggling to shed her marriage's dependence on alcohol showcases stripped-down dramatic chops that could open doors.

STORY: Sundance 2012: A Cautiously Optimistic Look at This Year's Market

Mark Webber

The 31-year-old writer-actor and Sundance regular has kicked around the indie world for 13 years, but at the 2012 fest, he not only provides onscreen support in two female-centric comedies (Save the Date, For a Good Time, Call …) but also writes and directs himself in his filmmaking debut, The End of Love, a competition drama about a new father struggling with the death of his infant's mother.

Gina Rodriguez

A virtual unknown, Rodriguez is the fierce central force in competition entry Filly Brown, a Mexican girl coping with her mother's incarceration via hip-hop. It's a challenge similar to that faced by then-unknown Michelle Rodriguez (no relation), whose knockout debut in Karyn Kusama's Girlfight helped that film win the 2000 grand jury prize and launched her career.