Over 80 feature films played at this year’s Sundance, as well as six indie episodic projects, 15 New Frontier projects and 59 short films that were drawn from the festival’s largest submission pool ever.
FESTIVAL FAVOURITE AWARD
Navalny
Director: Daniel Roher
Navalny is a documentary thriller directed by Daniel Roher hailing from CNN Films and HBO Max. It focuses on Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who gave Roher unparalleled access to him and his inner circle as he was recovering from being poisoned and decides to return home.
US DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Audience Award
Cha Cha Real Smooth
Director-Writer: Cooper Raiff
Grand Jury Award
Nanny
Director-Writer: Nikyatu Jusu
Top US winner Nanny, a horror-thriller, centres on Aisha (Anna Diop), an immigrant piecing together a new life in New York City while caring for the child of an Upper East Side family. She is forced to confront a concealed truth that threatens to shatter her precarious American Dream. Michelle Monaghan and Sinqua Walls also star.
“For this Grand Jury Prize we celebrate a movie that flooded us with its compassionate and horrifying portrayal of a mother being separated from her child,” Sundance juror Chelsea Bernard said during the virtual ceremony. “This film cannot be contained by any one genre —it’s visually stunning, masterfully acted, impeccably designed from sound to visual effects, and the overall vision, expertly guided by Nikyatu Jusu, comes together offering its audience an electrifying experience.”
Directing
Jamie Dack
Palm Trees and Power Lines
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award
K.D. Dávila
Emergency
Special Jury Award: Ensemble Cast
John Boyega, Nicole Beharie, Selenis Leyva, Connie Britton, Olivia Washington, London Covington and Michael K Williams
892
Special Jury Award: Uncompromising Artistic Vision
Bradley Rust Gray
blood
US DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Audience Award
Navalny
Director: Daniel Roher
Grand Jury Prize
The Exiles (US)
Directors: Ben Klein, Violet Columbus
The Exiles revolves around activist and documentary filmmaker Christine Choy, who filmed the leaders of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement during the 1989 massacre. Midway through production, the project was abandoned and the footage was all but forgotten. In Exiles, she returns to the never before seen archive, and the stories of three key figures during the protests, who remain political exiles to this day.
Directing
Reid Davenport
I Didn’t See You There
Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award
Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput
Fire Of Love
Special Jury Award: Impact for Change
Aftershock
Directors: Paula Eiselt, Tonya Lewis Lee
Special Jury Award: Creative Vision
Descendant
Director: Margaret Brown
WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Audience Award
The Territory (Brazil/Denmark/US)
Grand Jury Prize
All That Breathes (India/UK)
Director: Shaunak Sen
Directing
Simon Lereng Wilmont
A House Made Of Splinters (Denmark)
WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Audience Award
Girl Picture (Finland)
Director: Alli Haapasalo
Grand Jury Prize
Utama (Bolvia/Uruguay/France)
Director-Writer: Alejandro Loayza Grisi
Directing
Maryna Er Gorbach
Klondike (Ukraine/Turkey)
Special Jury Award: Innovative Spirit
Leonor Will Never Die (Philippines)
Director-Writer: Martika Ramirez Escobar
Special Jury Award: Acting
Teresa Sánchez
Dos Estaciones (Mexico)
Audience Award
Framing Agnes (Canada/US)
Director: Chase Joynt
SHORT FILMS AWARDS
Grand Jury Prize
The Headhunter’s Daughter (Philippines)
Director-Writer: Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan
Jury Award: US Fiction
If I Go Will They Miss Me (US)
Director-writer: Walter Thompson-Hernández
Jury Award: International Fiction
Warsha (France/Lebanon)
Director-writer: Dania Bdeir
Jury Award: Nonfiction
Displaced (Kosovo)
Director-writer: Samir Karahoda
Jury Award: Animation
Night Bus (Taiwan)
Director-writer: Joe Hsieh
Special Jury Award: Ensemble Cast
Zélia Duncan, Bruna Linzmeyer, Camila Rocha, Clarissa Ribeiro and Lorre Motta
A wild patience has taken me here (Brazil)
Director-writer: Érica Sarmet
Special Jury Award: Screenwriting
Sara Driver
Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver (US)
Directors: Lewie Kloster, Noah Kloster; Writer: Sara Driver
Deals
Apple paid $15 million for world rights to Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth. In other spotlight deals in the market, Searchlight Pictures closed a deal for around $7.5 million for US rights to Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack, while Sony Pictures Classics paid about $5 million for North American and some international territory rights to the Bill Nighy-starrer Living.
On the documentary side, National Geographic picked up Fire of Love in a mid-seven-figure world rights deal and The Territory.
