LOS ANGELES — Daniel Radcliffe playing a corpse, not just in a scene but throughout an entire film. A James Franco-produced fraternity hazing drama starring a Jonas brother. A hot-button documentary about an Islamic State public execution.

It can only be Sundance.

At the next Sundance Film Festival, scheduled for Jan. 21 to 31 in Park City, Utah, and environs, 120 feature films and roughly 70 shorts will “launch onto the global stage, beginning their journeys through our culture,” as Robert Redford, Sundance’s founder, put it in a statement on Wednesday. Programmers culled the lineup from 12,793 submissions, a 5 percent increase from last year.

This time, the festival’s center — the 32 American-made narrative films and documentaries, all world premieres, that compete for grand jury and audience prizes — will include movies that are notable for their multiculturalism (on both sides of the camera), seriousness, and, as ever with Sundance, deeply idiosyncratic topics.

Playing on opening night, a high-profile slot where films like “Whiplash” and “What Happened, Miss Simone?” have debuted in recent years, will be “Other People,” a comedic drama about a gay, big-city comedy writer who moves home to Sacramento, Calif., to care for his conservative, gravely ill mother. Directed and written by Chris Kelly — and based on his own experience — “Other People” stars Jesse Plemons (“Fargo,” “Friday Night Lights”) and Molly Shannon. (The movie counts the actor Adam Scott as a producer.)