PARK CITY, Utah – It’s rare for the Sundance Film Festival to start with a documentary. Yet organizers say this year’s opening night film, “Chicago 10,” represents just the sort of bold gambit the nation’s top independent-cinema venue likes to see in its movies.

“It’s a film that I think at one level is really basically about risk-taking, about people who want to change the world, so in that sense, it’s inspiring,” said Geoffrey Gilmore, director of the festival, which is overseen by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute.

“It speaks to what goes into the struggle for social change, which is not unlike what goes into the personal vision of independent film,” he added.

Premiering Thursday night at the 11-day festival in the ski resort town of Park City, “Chicago 10” is director Brett Morgen’s stylistic retrospective of the turbulent 1968 Democratic National Convention and the trial of anti-war protesters that followed.

Instead of a dusty lesson that might be ancient history to youngish Sundance crowds, Morgen weaves archival footage with original animation and a voice cast that includes Nick Nolte, Jeffrey Wright, Mark Ruffalo and Roy Scheider to put the courtroom drama and its flamboyant players into perspective.

“I don’t think anyone’s seen a film quite like this before. I’m expecting it to be explosive on opening night,” said Morgen, a Sundance veteran who screened his boxing documentary “On the Ropes” and his Robert Evans chronicle “The Kid Stays in the Picture” at past festivals.

“There was an energy and a passion I saw in my footage and through research of that era. I wanted to make a film not so much about a historical, academic encounter of what happened but something with that youthful energy like it was captured in a bottle and unleashed today.”

The festival’s closing film is “Life Support,” starring Queen Latifah as a former drug addict who becomes an AIDS activist.

Distributors will scour the lineup for the next big independent hit such as last year’s “Little Miss Sunshine,” which Fox Searchlight scooped up and turned into a $60 million success.