New York arrives in Park City en masse this week. At the Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night, nearly two dozen of the event’s most anticipated entries bear the mark of the Big Apple, featuring settings, directors, or actors that we can call our own. Within an extensive list of local titles, one can see proof of the depth and diversity of this year’s Sundance lineup, which boasts 121 feature films.

That said, the New York contingent tends to break down into three types of projects. Here’s a quick glance at a trio of the festival’s most interesting contenders, all set to enter the national film conversation later this week:

1. Do-It-Yourself
“Flow: For Love of Water”

Devout Sundance fans may already know director Irena Salina for her 2000 documentary “Ghost Bird: The Life and Art of Judith Deim,” which airs regularly on the Sundance Channel. Her new documentary, “Flow: For Love of Water,” is a project five years in the making.

“People think of global warming, but they don’t realize the way it trickles down,” said Ms. Salina, who currently lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and spent last week finishing the final cut of “Flow.” “As water grows more scarce, there’s increasing pressure to commercialize and privatize water — something we even saw in New Orleans before [Hurricane] Katrina. As weather systems change, it’s becoming more difficult to predict droughts. People are going to have to start realizing this isn’t just India or Africa; it could happen here.”

Taking it upon herself to visit the continents and report back, Ms. Salina recorded scenes of the battles under way to procure and protect water in India and Africa. She also journeyed to California to talk with experts about the issues of bottled water and privatized supplies.

“‘Flow’ is not just about water, but about economies and lives destroyed by its absence,” the director said. “Everywhere I went, they didn’t want to talk about water. They wanted to talk about the issues of food, jobs, and — as women must turn to prostitution to save their families — AIDS as well.”

Ms. Salina is one of 30 documentarians at Sundance this year who did their own reporting and investigating. Perhaps the most anticipated project to employ this approach was undertaken by another New Yorker, Morgan Spurlock, whose “Where In the World is Osama Bin Laden?,” finds the director of “Super Size Me” in the MiddleEast in search of the world’s most dangerous terrorist.

2. Breaking New Boundaries
“Sleep Dealer”

As with any great film festival in the preliminary stages, a handful of films are already separating themselves from the pack and landing on must-see lists. The first is Alex Rivera’s “Sleep Dealer.” As Mr. Rivera rushed to finish the film late last week, his abbreviated summary of “Sleep Dealer” hinted at a cinematic vision of the future that promises intrigue, if nothing else. “This is definitely a movie that people can’t come to with preconceived notions of what a ‘Sundance movie’ is,” he said. “The way I pitch our film, it’s like ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ set in the future, in Mexico, with migrant workers and a backdrop of war … and mostly in Spanish.”

Mr. Rivera, a familiar name among Sundance organizers and a resident of Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, developed this, his first feature, at the 2000 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and at the 2001 Directors Lab. Its forthcoming festival screenings are already sold out, with audiences clamoring to see just what this bizarre concoction will offer.

Try this for jumping genres: “Sleep Dealer,” one of 16 films competing in the dramatic program, centers around a family in futuristic Mexico, in which the border with America has been militarized and the nation’s water supply has been placed under the jurisdiction of a corporation, which of course overcharges the local villagers. Using technology as a way to break out of his isolation, a teenager plans to somehow flee from his homeland and establish himself in America’s lower class — a familiar theme set in a foreign sci-fi scenario.

“A lot of people, when they think of independent films, they immediately think of a family story or an intimate drama,” Mr. Rivera said. “My perspective is that we are at a really unique moment right now politically — in kind of an emergency with so many crises happening at once, and I want to use the new technology available to us independent filmmakers to make something visually explosive while engaging these urgent issues of our time.”

3. Star Power
“The Wackness”

While some New York entries are notable for their enterprise and others for their original or virtuosic vision, another group of films boasts a mix of talent so tantalizing they can’t be ignored.

Included is “The Wackness,” director Jonathan Levine’s ode to New York circa 1994, a coming-of-age tale of men from two different generations. One is an teenage outcast (Josh Peck) who spends his days chasing women, smoking marijuana, and struggling to overcome his own depression and his parents’ financial problems; the other is his equally frazzled therapist (Ben Kingsley), whose marriage is failing and who swaps therapy sessions for pot.

“When Ben Kingsley read the script, one of his conditions was that we had to shoot this in New York — even the interiors,” said Mr. Levine, who was born and raised in New York and lived in just about every corner of Manhattan before attending the American Film Institute. “New York isn’t just a character in the film, it’s central to the pacing and feel. This is a very personal film for me, and I think the city’s had so much volatility in the last 10 or 15 years, that to look back before 9/11 and see how innocent it was in a way, despite all its problems, it’s an interesting journey back in time.” “The Wackness,” which will compete against “Sleep Dealer” in the dramatic competition, is aided by a talented supporting cast that includes Famke Janssen, Mary Kate Olsen, and the rapper and actor Method Man.

ssnyder@nysun.com