‘Boyhood’ star Ellar Coltrane

Director Richard Linklater is taking his latest film, entitled Boyhood, to the soon-to-unspool Sundance Film Festival, this year celebrating its 30th anniversary.  The late-addition grab for the Park City fest comes a year after the filmmaker premiered Before Midnight, the ever beguiling third entry to his acclaimed Before-trilogy (which we recently ranked as one of our favorite films of 2013) at the very same festival.

Boyhood marks, perhaps, one of the most ambitious projects yet for the Texas-native filmmaker, who seems to specialize in chronologically remarkable film projects. The film chronicles twelve years in the life of a family and stars newcomer Ellar Coltrane as he navigates life from childhood to young adulthood.  Linklater mainstays Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette portray his divorced parents in the movie, which was filmed in short spurts from 2002-2013, and the director’s daughter, Lorelei Linklater co-stars as Coltrane’s sister.  This film will premiere as a special sneak preview to the festival which opens on January 16th and runs through January 26th in Park City, Utah.

Linklater has a long and storied history with the festival, as it was nearly the birth of filmmaking career. His 1991 breakthrough feature Slacker premiered in competition and he has since took the bookend films Before Sunrise and Before Midnight to the festival.  He is currently in thick of the awards derby with an expected writing Oscar nomination for Before Midnight, which he would shares co-writers and stars Hawke and Julie Delpy.

As of now, Boyhood is still seeking distribution in the U.S.