Besides the money and ego gratification, all of this action serves as a tonic and perhaps a reminder to the filmmakers of why they're doing what they're doing. Burstein isn't even sure she'd be making docs if it weren't for the festival. "It would be so much harder," she says. "It's a great venue."

Peralta says, "Sundance reinvigorates me. Usually I feel like a salesman. We're not considered filmmakers. It's how I'm talked to — anybody can do it. What these guys are discovering is, do they make a second film?"

Alas, once the festival is over, these filmmakers are thrown out into the cold, cruel world of audience indifference. Even established documentarians like Spurlock warn of the harsh reception to be found on the open market.

"If your movie doesn't make X amount of dollars per screen, you're out," the Super Size Me filmmaker says. "They get rid of it. They don't even give it a chance to find an audience, so it's really difficult. We released a movie before Christmas that we basically self-released. We put out a movie called What Would Jesus Buy? about the commercialization of Christmas. It played in about 40 markets, but it didn't even break three hundred grand."

Reflecting on past fest experience, Peralta says the Sundance afterglow lasts a few weeks, and then depression sets in. But even at the bottom of this well, he's already thinking about what he would like to do next — it's clear that he and the others are often making these films not because they want to but because they have to.

Says Urman, "They don't know how to do anything else."

— additional reporting by Ryan Stewart