“If it’s in Sundance, it’s probably incredibly ‘indie’ and I won’t be able to relate to it,” my sister said this morning, putting a minor damper on my excitement for the world-renowned film festival. This in mind, I was a little bit anxious walking through the theater doors to see [i]Wish You Were Here[/i], afraid I may be bored to death for two hours, sitting next to people who reeked of cigarettes and dressed in all black. This case, however, was the complete opposite. In fact, I have never been more engaged in a movie in my life. (Yes, I have seen [i]Inception[/i].)

Director and co-writer Kieran Darcy-Smith has created a film that is absolutely enthralling. With a mixture of marriage drama and missing person mysteries, [i]Wish You Were Here [/i]is that utopia between reality and suspense that all thriller movie directors attempt to capture.

“I really just wanted to keep the ball up in the air in the beginning and raise a few questions for the audience so that they could remain engaged and entertained and caring and eventually be able piece this thing together and I wanted to treat the audience with respect in that regard,” Smith said. “I’ve never been a fan of the really jumbled-up stuff. I wanted to get a similar dynamic going, but make it a bit smoother.”

Based on a true story, [i]Wish You Were Here[/i] follows a vacation to Cambodia gone completely awry, leaving one man missing and the others’ lives wrecked. Between a husband drunkenly cheating on his pregnant wife with her sister and the questions of what happened to the missing man that only the husband holds the answers to, there is never a dull moment.

“The story was based on two different ideas. The first was a true story that happened to a friend of Kieran and mine who went traveling overseas. One of the guys went missing and we never found him. I was really interested in the idea of what that would feel like for the other three that were on the trip," Co-writer Felicity Price said.

"The other idea I was interested in exploring was a relationship drama. I was thinking about ourselves, Generation X, who has grown up and now has to be responsible and it’s kind of a drag and they still want go out partying. I was interested in the idea of responsibility and what it is like to hang on to a relationship and infidelity is a good way of breaking up the relationship, but infidelity is a boring thing to watch in a film on its own. So that’s where I came up with the idea of the putting the two stories together,” said Price.

However many ideas it took, it was completely worth the time and thought. Among all the famous directors and incredible cinematography here at Sundance, [i]Wish You Were Here[/i] is by far one of the best movies and an absolute must-see.