Oscar-nominated direc­tor Jef­frey Blitz, the direc­tor of the national spelling bee doc­u­men­tary Spell­bound, is now tack­ling the world of debate.

Rocket Sci­ence will make its world pre­miere at the 2007 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val in Jan­u­ary. What is the film about? Accord­ing to Yahoo! Movies:

Hal Hefner is an aver­age sopho­more at Plains­boro High School in New Jer­sey. He stut­ters and suf­fers the daily indig­ni­ties of a typ­i­cal teenager. With only a lit­tle encour­age­ment, Hal falls in love with the star of the debate team, Ginny Ryer­son and finds him­self sud­denly immersed in her ultra com­pet­i­tive world of high school debat­ing, with its play­ers, its pol­i­tics and its own set of rules.

Reece Thomp­son plays the role of Hal Hefner. IMDb has a com­plete cast list. Other char­ac­ters include debate lumi­nar­ies Abra­ham Lin­coln and Stephen Douglas.

Some web­sites says the film will be released in Spring 2007. Oth­ers says Sum­mer 2007. The film is cur­rently not listed on the Pic­ture­house web­site. The release date will likely be deter­mined by how the film is received at Sundance.

Pic­ture­house, whose releases include A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion and the forth­com­ing Pan’s Labyrinth, is the film’s distributor.

[via Duane Hyland’s post on eDebate]