25. "Down to the Bone"
Director: Debra Granik
World premiere: Sundance 2004

Debra Granik's so far sole feature about a single mother wrestling with addiction made noise at Sundance's 2004 fest, receiving the award for best director as well as a special jury prize for acting for lead Vera Farmiga. Farmiga's commendation was especially well-earned, and not the only one she'd receive for her riveting turn, as the following year the Los Angeles Film Critics would similarly name her Best Actress. With such high praise, one would think "Down to the Bone"'s prospects were, as far as indies go, quite promising. Yet after being purchased by Laemmle/Zeller Films and screened at a number of subsequent 2004 fests, the film proved a victim of careless release planning, as it opened in New York and L.A. in late-November 2005 during the glut of awards-bait prestige pics. Out-budgeted and out-marqueed by its big-studio competition, it registered only on the radar of the most devoted cinephiles and failed to even crack the $20,000 box office threshold, a shame considering that it remains one of the rare recent Sundance-hyped films to actually warrant a viewing. --Nick Schager

24. "Hav Plenty"
Director: Christopher Chero
U.S. premiere: Sundance 1998

In touting the release of his $65,000 debut, Christopher Cherot told IndieWire, "I do not think ["Hav Plenty"] is the best thing that I have inside of me." A decade later, we're still waiting. Although he would later direct a hip-hop take on "The Great Gatsby" called "G," Cherot's first film remains his best, a loose no-budget romantic comedy set on New Year's Eve, where a frustrated writer finds himself in the company of three women who are set, for various reasons, on ringing in the new year with him. Although the film didn't make its world premiere at Sundance, the buzz started when Babyface and Tracey Edmonds caught "Hav Plenty" at the Acapulco Black Film Festival and attached themselves as executive producers, which in turn got the attention of Miramax, who signed Cherot to a $2.5 million, three-picture deal. The stage was set for a big U.S. premiere and indeed, "Hav Plenty" took Sundance by storm, leading Premiere to write, "The unknowns in this romantic comedy aren't likely to remain so for long." But only one, Hill Harper, would go onto bigger things, and that includes Cherot, who never could get his next film, "True Heroes," off the ground at Miramax. --Stephen Saito

23. "Ed's Next Move"
Director: John C. Walsh
World premiere: Sundance 1996

NYU film student John C. Walsh's debut -- a genial enough rom-com about a lovelorn Wisconsinite who evacuates for Manhattan's East Village -- couldn't have had a more '90s indie backstory. After shopping around his script to studios who poo-pooed it without a name actor attached, Walsh and his producer shot it themselves for $93,000, mostly from maxed-out credit cards (and almost a million bucks in deferments), plus took all the shortcuts and compromises possible: shooting with whatever locations were free, taking product placement deals and using short ends left over from Wayne Wang's "Smoke." Post-production costs took another $150,000 worth of fundraising and begging, and while the finished film earned only mixed reviews, the audience buzz was enough to score a U.S. theatrical deal with Orion Classics. The epilogue? Walsh did no more than break even, the film has yet to see a DVD release, and other than his barely seen 2002 follow-up "Pipe Dream" (based in part on his experiences making "Ed's Next Move"), Walsh's only other IMDb credit is as second-unit director on "The Notorious Bettie Page," which also happened to be directed by his wife, Mary Harron. --Aaron Hillis

22. "Panic"
Director: Henry Bromell
World premiere: Sundance 2000

"A bright, energetic first feature full of wit and surprises" is how Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt described "Panic" in his 2000 Sundance review, which also claimed that the film seemed capable of being both a "cult favorite" and "sleeper hit." This last description almost gets it right, as Henry Bromell's story -- about a psychiatrist-visiting hitman (William H. Macy) and the woman (Neve Campbell) he soon starts seeing behind his wife's (Tracy Ullman) back -- was put into temporary hibernation after it didn't land a distributor at the festival. Despite the vocal outcries of a number of critics (including Roger Ebert), the film eventually made its debut on Showtime, only to later receive a token theatrical release that netted box office receipts just shy of $780,000. Given the generally positive critical consensus with which it was greeted, as well as its ready-made marketing hook of sharing fundamental similarities with HBO's pop culture sensation "The Sopranos," "Panic"'s inability to attract serious attention remains one of the more puzzling fates to befall an admired Sundance entry. Bromell's since returned to the lauded TV background from whence he came, writing, directing and producing episodes of Showtime's "Sopranos"esque "Brotherhood." --NS

21. "All Over Me"
Director: Alex Sichel
World premiere: Sundance 1997

"The festival is all about who is going to get picked up, and everyone wants to make their discovery... We definitely got less attention because we came in with a distributor," said filmmaker Alex Sichel in a 1998 Entertainment Weekly article, referring to Sundance, the now-defunct distributor Fine Line Features, and her one and only directorial feature. Written by her sister Sylvia, Sichel's gritty, vérité-style drama -- about the sex, drugs and rock-wannabe lives of two 15-year-olds whose friendship (and, one-sidedly, unrealized lesbian longings) begins to deteriorate after a thuggish boy comes between them -- was practically snorting lines off the riot grrrl's zeitgeist. Shot in then-seedy-and-therefore-cool Hell's Kitchen, with a soundtrack featuring Sleater-Kinney, Babes in Toyland and Helium, the Sichels' female-centric answer to "Kids" seemed destined to be a youth-culture breakout hit, except that the film's roughly $700,000 budget translated to less than $300,000 at the U.S. box office. Perhaps it drowned under the '90s girl-angst wave of "Welcome to the Dollhouse," "Foxfire" and "Girls Town"? --AH

Check out all of the 2009 Sundance coverage at IFC.com and SundanceChannel.com.

[Photos: "Down to the Bone," Laemmle/Zeller Films, 2005; "Hav Plenty," Miramax, 1998; "Ed's Next Move," Orion Classics, 1996; "Panic," Roxie Releasing, 2001; "All Over Me," Fine Line Features, 1997]