Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine

Winning a bidding war at the Sundance Film Festival is hardly a guarantee of commercial success - or even a good movie. But January's Sundance buzz won a highly-prized summer opening for this low-budget look at the American Dream from the perspective of one of the most dysfunctional - and funniest - families the cinema's seen in a very long while. Little Miss Sunshine marks the feature directing debut from the husband-and-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Dayton and Faris, who have come to films (like Ridley and Tony Scott) as established figures in the commercial and music video arenas, waited literally years before deciding on Michael Arndt's original comedy. They insist the script attracted their superb ensemble: Greg Kinnear as the always-up, motivational speaker father, Toni Collette as the sane wife in her second marriage, Alan Arkin as the heroin-snorting, porn-obsessed grandpa recently booted from his assisted living home, and Steve Carell as Collette's suicidally-depressed gay sibling, dumped by his lover and no longer the world's number one Proust authority. Faris and Dayton discuss their partnership, working with Oscar-worthy actors on their first film and finding their seven-year-old star, Abigail Breslin.

•