The opening night selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, MARY AND MAX is a clayography feature film from Academy Award® winning writer/director Adam Elliot and producer Melanie Coombs, featuring the voice talents of Toni Collette, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Humphries and Eric Bana. Spanning 20 years and 2 continents, MARY AND MAX tells of a pen-pal relationship between two very different people: Mary Dinkle (Collette), a chubby, lonely 8-year-old living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia; and Max Horovitz (Hoffman), a severely obese, 44-year-old Jewish man with Asperger s Syndrome living in the chaos of New York City. As MARY AND MAX chronicles Mary s trip from adolescence to adulthood, and Max s passage from middle to old age, it explores a bond that survives much more than the average friendship s ups-and-downs. Like Elliot and Coombs Oscar® winning animated short HARVIE KRUMPET, MARY AND MAX is both hilarious and poignant as it takes us on a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, where babies come from, obesity, kleptomania, sexual differences, trust, copulating dogs, religious differences, agoraphobia and many more of life s surprises.