This is an excerpt from an article at Economist.com It was this spirit, not the letter, that was the inspiration for the founding of InDigEnt, an American production company dedicated to financing independent digital films. Like Dogma 95, cast and crew agree to certain limitations. In this case, very low budgets and short production schedules. At the 2002 Sundance film festival, InDigEnt won both the grand jury and directing awards, for “Personal Velocity” and “Tadpole”. At this year's Sundance festival in January, they returned with Peter Hedges's first feature, “Pieces of April”. Katie Holmes, in perhaps her best performance yet, plays April, prodigal daughter to Joy (a brilliant Patricia Clarkson), who is bitter and dying of cancer. April has been persuaded by her boyfriend to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the family, but she can't cook and her oven is broken. While she races up and down the stairs of her rundown Lower East Side apartment block trying to find a friendly neighbour to help, Joy and the family drive hesitantly towards the city. The script is watertight and the camera is light but insistent. Just as with Dogma films, the actors seem unaffected by the presence of the camera, as if they were performing for themselves rather than the director. Each moment resonates with the unpredictability of reality.

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