LOS ANGELES — The Sundance Film Festival is mostly known for showcasing work by directors who are (very) wet behind the ears. But an unusually large number of well-known indie filmmakers — people like Todd Solondz, Spike Lee, Liz Garbus, Ira Sachs and Werner Herzog — will bring new work to the Sundance snow next month.

Sundance on Monday unveiled its selections for the star-driven Premieres section of the festival, the next incarnation of which will take place in Utah starting on Jan. 21. And stars there will be: Selena Gomez and Paul Rudd, for instance, star in “The Fundamentals of Caring,” a comedic drama directed by Rob Burnett, who is best known as David Letterman’s longtime producer.

Other selections star Michael Shannon, Michelle Williams, Viggo Mortensen, Maya Rudolph, Danny Glover, Greg Kinnear, Ellen Burstyn, Rachel Weisz, Kathy Bates, Anna Kendrick, Greta Gerwig and John Krasinski. Mr. Krasinski will also direct “The Hollars,” about an aspiring artist who returns to his Middle America hometown from New York.

But the 2016 Premieres section also includes a cluster of established directors, some of whom are returning to Sundance after straying to other festivals to show work.

Mr. Solondz, who unveiled his last film, “Dark Horse,” at the Venice Film Festival in 2011, will bring his new comedy, “Wiener-Dog,” to Sundance. “Wiener-Dog” tells the story of an indomitable dachshund who affects the lives of various people, including Dawn Wiener, the character at the center of Mr. Solondz’s 1995 break-though “Welcome to the Dollhouse.” Backing for the film came from Megan Ellison, the Oracle heiress and producer of films like “American Hustle” and “Her.”

The documentary side of the Premieres section will find Mr. Lee with an uncharacteristically upbeat film: “Michael Jackson’s Journey From Motown to Off the Wall” uses rare archival footage to study the transformation of a child star to the King of Pop. All told, Sundance will showcase a barrage of documentaries about cultural figures — Maya Angelou, Robert Mapplethorpe and Norman Lear, among others.

Ms. Garbus (“What Happened, Miss Simone?”) has a film about Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, in which the two subjects “tell the story of their past and present, their loves and losses,” according to Sundance.

The full Premieres lineup — including a newly topical documentary about gun violence in America called “Under the Gun” — is available here.