From Garden State to Grizzly Man, the Sundance Film Festival is all about alternative voices and independent visions. It has championed Native American projects like Smoke Signals, launched gay themed films like Boys Don’t Cry, and discovered cult faves like Napoleon Dynamite.

While Hollywood actively courts the widest audience possible, Sundance embraces the obscure and overlooked. Mainstream American entertainment avoids most religious subject matter. The theology of Hollywood is bland and generic, "Be kind, don’t take faith too seriously." The studios will even sacrifice potential profits to avoid controversy (remember a little something called The Passion of the Christ)?

That is why, as a faith-fueled filmmaker, I thank God for Sundance. Independent filmmakers who explore the experiences of outsiders aren’t afraid of religious issues or controversies. Sundance 2006 featured an abundance of films that took the spiritual, the ethical, and the theological seriously.

Twenty-five film students from Biola University joined twenty-five ministers-in-training from Fuller Theological Seminary at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. We were eager to assess the cultural pulse, searching for signs of life amidst independent film. We came away surprisingly inspired.

My favorite film of the fest came from Denmark. Adam’s Apples was a brilliant, deadpan dark comedy rooted in the book of Job. A neo-Nazi sentenced to community service encounters a minister who refuses to lose hope despite countless family tragedies. Goodness triumphs over considerable evil with a gun wielding Pakistani, a washed up Danish tennis star and an unwed mother also won over in the process. It marks the directorial debut of Adams Thomas Jensen, co-writer of Dogme 95 films The King is Alive and Mifune. Adam’s Apples offers a hilarious answer to the Bee Gees’ musical question, "How Deep is Your Love?"

The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award went to Hilary Brougher for her remarkably nuanced character study, Stephanie Daley. Although set up as a courtroom drama, it brings refreshing humanity to issues of pregnancy and childbearing. It contrasts an unwed teenager who doesn’t want her baby, with a 40-something professional struggling to bring her baby to term. Stephanie Daley features riveting performances from Amber Tamblyn and Tilda Swinton. Filmmaker Hilary Brougher molds her own experience as the mother of twins into the most insightful and timely portrait of the fear and trembling inherent in childbirth.

Arkansas-born actress Joey Lauren Adams draws upon her Southern roots to create her filmmaking debut, Come Early Morning. Adams and star Ashley Judd’s genuine feeling for the region results in a rare, unaffected portrait of Southern womanhood. Faith informs all the characters’ choices.

Racial and religious tension are treated with surprisingly fresh perspectives in three more Southern stories. Somebodies takes viewers inside the comic college experience of writer, director and star, Hadji. The film unfolds as a series of sketches. Hadji lampoons the white-bred campus Christian fellowship suggesting their initials-- CCC could be a front for the old KKK. Ouch.

Forgiven examines the divergent experiences of justice within the black and white communities. Filmmaker Paul Fitzgerald plays an errant district attorney, eager to bring law and order back to Congress. His Christian convictions fuel his politics but fail to prevent him from hiding facts that could have released an innocent man. As the prisoner is wrongfully convicted, Russell Hornsby builds a righteous anger that erupts into tragic consequences. Both the characters and the audience are left at a crossroads, wondering where forgiveness can be found.

While Forgiven is fictional, The Trials of Darryl Hunt are all too real. This scathing documentary burns with a fury that Christians desperately need to recover. The injustices inflicted upon Hunt should rally people of faith and conscience to root out the racism that undercuts the criminal justice system.

My students were drawn to two of the darker films in the fest, Wristcuttters and A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Both stare street life straight in the face, addressing suicide and addiction. Both feature a punk rock sensibility from cast to directors. They dignify the darkness, explaining its allure, but dare their characters (and audiences) to live boldly as a defiant act of faith. Emerging moviegoers prefer happy endings that are earned. Two hours of hell serves as a prerequisite for two minutes of grace.

Quincenara won the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize as Best Dramatic Film. As Magdelena anticipates her fifteenth birthday party, she discovers she is pregnant. Her religious family rejects her. But she finds a home with others who’ve been rejected, including her gay cousin, Carlos. Issues of judgment, grace, and forgiveness flow throughout these Sundance films. All too often, the Christian community served as the voice of judgment rather than the mediator of grace.

Madeinusa brings viewers into a colorful but troubling Peruvian village. Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the townspeople celebrate Holy Time, when God is dead. The film raises the provocative notion, "If God is dead (even for two days), then laws and morality must be dead (or suspended) too." The resulting spirit of chaos haunts our heroine, Madeinusa, who desperately wants to escape her father’s inappropriate sexual advances. Her struggles become a tragic, cautionary fable.

Documentaries addressed the religious divide that continues to fuel the cultural wars. Clear Cut tracks the tension to Philomath, Oregon, where the local Clemens Foundation pressures the school board to alter its politically correct policies. Concerned Christian Steve Lowther ‘swings the hammer’ to effect social change, threatening to pull the college scholarships that have been offered to all Philomath High School grads. Filmmaker Peter Richardson is a Philomath grad and a recipient of the Clemens Foundation Scholarship. He stands in the gap, presenting both sides, leading viewers into a sense of sadness that no one won this round of the culture wars, though many potential college students lost.

This Film is Not Yet Rated uncovers the secrecy surrounding the MPAA rating system. Documentarian Kirby Dick juxtaposes the ratings board’s leniency towards violence with an aversion to almost all onscreen sexuality. His use of footage from films rated NC-17 makes his point and even desexualizes some decidedly graphic scenes. The film asks for a clarity and consistency from the MPAA that might even please watchdog groups like the American Family Association or Focus on the Family.

Perhaps the most incendiary film for Christian audiences will be Forgiving the Franklins. This savage satire portrays churchgoers who are repressed, joyless and even murderous. It suggests we’d all be better off if there was no guilt or shame emanating from religion. Even Jesus makes a cameo appearance, attempting to chop down his cross. Sundance audiences howled with laughter and offered filmmaker Jay Floyd a standing ovation. While they celebrated this assault on the religious right, I cried, depressed and convicted by the depiction of Christians as judgmental and vindictive. It was painful to watch sincere Christian characters shun their neighbors. So when the time arose for Q and A, I spoke up, "As a Southerner, a filmmaker, and an evangelical Christian, I apologize for anything ever done to you in the name of God."

The filmmaker was prepared to be attacked. He was not ready for an apology. The entire tenor of the room changed. Audience members approached me afterwards with hugs, kisses and hopes. My students talked to the cast and crew, inviting them to join us for further conversation. Our ‘enemies’ became fast friends, even joining us for lunch. And that exchange set off a series of conversations and exchanges that week about our faith and how we live it.

Sundance films reveal the dark side of the Christian faith. They are profoundly political in nature and overt in their messages. My students and I saw how judgmental, exclusive and unloving we’ve been. We could have easily responded to the anger of the filmmakers by launching defensive tirades or aggressive counter-arguments. For one brief moment, we had an opportunity to challenge the stereotypes and epithets we’ve earned. One word of grace undercut years of judgment. That is a much more than movie magic.

We missed the most obviously religious film of the festival, Son of Man. It updates the gospels to today’s South Africa, capturing Jesus’ calls for justice and peace. Despite glowing reviews from critics like Roger Ebert, distributors backed away from a black Jesus. They either underestimated American audiences religious interests (again) or understood that Christians will only accept a particular kind of cinematic Jesus. Irregardless, Son of Man deserves a wide release. If four gospels enhanced our understanding of Jesus, then a South African portrait of Christ may also deepen our faith.

Two more remarkably spiritual films emerged with considerable audience buzz. While God Grew Tired of Us won the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary for its harrowing portrait of Sudanese boys fleeing persecution, Into Great Silence took viewers into a direct experience of the divine. This nearly silent, three-hour portrait of a French monastery transported audiences into the beauty of a life contemplating God. While the culture wars continue to rage beyond Sundance, Into Great Silence offers a welcome solace, a balm for our weary collective soul. How encouraging to realize that God will continue to speak through whatever means, whatever film and whatever fest is available. We must simply buy the tickets, and take the time, slowing down long enough to recognize the divine.