The Sundance Film Festival has unveiled its Jury and Audience Award winners for 2023. The day’s big winners included Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version , which claimed both the Audience Award and Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in U. S.
Dramatic Competition, as well as A. V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and On e for Focus Features, which took the Grand Jury Prize in the same section.
Other titles taking top awards included Festival Favorite Radical from filmmaker Christopher Zalla and 3Pas Studios; Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project from Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, which took the Grand Jury Prize for U. S. Documentary; Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia , which nabbed the U.
S. Documentary Audience Award; and D. Smith’s Kokomo City , which dominated the NEXT section as it claimed both the Innovator and Audience Award.
Related Story Sundance Review: Cynthia Erivo & Alia Shawkat In Anthony Chen’s ‘Drift’ Written, directed and produced by Keshavarz for Archer Grey, The Persian Version watches as a large Iranian-American family gathers for the patriarch’s heart transplant, with a secret then being uncovered that catapults an estranged mother and daughter into an exploration of the past. A Thousand and One follows the unpologetic and free-spirited Inez (Teyana Taylor) as she kidnaps 6-year-old Terry (Josiah Cross) from the foster care system, convinced it’s one last, necessary crime on the path to redemption. Holding on to their secret and each other, mother and son set out to reclaim their sense of home, identity, and stability in New York City.
Lena Waithe is among the producers. Radical follows a frustrated teacher (Eugenio Derbez) exploring new educational methods in a Mexican border town, with Going to Mars meditating on the life of poet Nikki Giovanni, and Beyond Utopia following families fleeing North Korea. Then, there’s the Magnolia Pictures-acquired Kokomo City , charting the experiences of four trans sex workers, as they confront the dichotomy between the Black community and themselves.
Jurors present for the Sundance awards announcement, livestreamed to the festival’s social media channels from The Ray Theatre in Park City, Utah, included Jeremy O. Harris and Marlee Matlin for U. S.
Dramatic Competition, Ramona Diaz and Carla Gutierrez for U. S. Documentary Competition, Funa Maduka for World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and Madeleine Olnek for NEXT.
The 2023 festival has spotlighted 111 features and 64 shorts, selected from 15,856 submissions, via screenings in Park City, Salt Lake City, and at the Sundance Resort. Over 75% of both short and feature-length works, along with many selected Indie Episodics, will be available for streaming via the fest’s online platform through January 29. Sundance’s first in-person festival since the Covid pandemic was marked by a number of major sales — most of which we were first to report on.
The first title to lock in a huge deal was Chloe Domont’s thriller Fair Play , starring Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich, which went to Netflix for around $20M. John Carney’s musical drama Flora and Son , starring Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, went to Apple for around the same, with Searchlight taking the improvised ensemble comedy Theater Camp for around $8 million. Mubi picked up Ira Sachs’ relationship drama Passages , with A24 in talks to acquire the buzzy Midnight title Talk to Me as of Tuesday, and MTV Documentary Films nabbing Maite Alberdi’s World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner The Eternal Memory , as was announced this morning.
Last year’s Sundance ceremony solidified the awards trajectory of four of five contenders for the Documentary Feature Oscar in 2023 — those titles being Navalny (Documentary Competition Audience Award, Festival Favorite Award), Fire of Love (Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award), All That Breathes (World Cinema Documentary Competition Documentary Prize) and A House Made of Splinters (World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award). The festival proved even more relevant to the awards race the year prior, with Sian Heder’s Best Picture Oscar winner CODA and Questlove’s Best Doc Winner Summer of Soul highlighting its finger on the pulse across both narrative and documentary. View the winners’ list for 2023 below.
FESTIVAL FAVORITE AWARD Radical Director: Christopher Zalla U. S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION Grand Jury Prize A Thousand And One Director: A.
V. Rockwell Audience Award The Persian Version Director: Maryam Keshavarz Directing Award Sing J. Lee The Accidental Getaway Driver Jury Award: Creative Vision Magazine Dreams Director: Elijah Bynum Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award Maryam Keshavarz The Persian Version Special Jury Award: Acting Lio Mehiel Mutt Jury Award: Ensemble Theater Camp Directors: Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman U.
S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION Grand Jury Prize Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project Directors: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson Audience Award Beyond Utopia Director: Madeleine Gavin Directing Award Luke Lorentzen A Still Small Voice Special Jury Award: Clarity of Vision The Stroll Directors: Kristen Lovell, Zackary Drucker Special Jury Award: Freedom of Expression Bad Press Directors: Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, Joe Peeler Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award Daniela I. Quiroz Going Varsity in Mariachi WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION Audience Award 20 Days in Mariupol (Ukraine) Director: Mstylav Chernov Grand Jury Prize The Eternal Memory (Chile) Director: Maite Alberdi Directing Award Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Estonia/France/Ireland) Director: Anna Hints Special Jury Award: Verite Filmmaking Against the Tide (India) Director: Sarvnik Kaur Special Jury Award: Creative Vision Fantastic Machine (Sweden/Denmark) Director: Axel Danielson WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION Audience Award Shayda (Australia) Director: Noora Niasari Grand Jury Prize Scrapper (UK) Director: Charlotte Regan Directing Award Marija Kavtaradze Slow (Lithuania/Spain/Sweden) Special Jury Award: Creative Vision Animalia (France/Morocco/Qatar) Director: Sofia Alaoui Special Jury Award: Best Performance Rosa Marchant When It Melts (Belgium/Netherlands) Special Jury Award: Cinematography Lílis Soares Mami Wata (Nigeria) NEXT Audience Award Kokomo City Director: D.
Smith Innovator Award Kokomo City Director: D. Smith SHORT FILMS AWARDS Grand Jury Prize When You Left Me On That Boulevard (U. S.
A. ) Director: Kayla Abuda Galang Jury Award: US Fiction Rest Stop Director: Crystal Kayiza Jury Award: Directing, International Valeria Hofmann AliEN0089 (Chile) Jury Award: Directing, US Jarreau Carrillo The Vacation Jury Award: Animation The Flying Sailor Directors: Wendy Tilby, Amanda Forbis (Canada) Jury Award: Nonfiction Will You Look At Me (China) Director: Shuli Huang Jury Award: International Fiction The Kidnapping of the Bride (Germany) Director: Sophia Mocorrea PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED WINNERS Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize The Pod Generation Director: Sophie Barthes Amazon Studios Nonfiction Award Jess Devaney It’s Only Life After All Amazon Studios Fiction Award Kara Durrett The Starling Girl Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Editing Nonfiction Mary Manhardt Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Editing Fiction Troy Takaki Sundance/NHK Award Olive Nwosu Lady Sundance Institute | Stars Collective Imagination Awards Tamara Shogaolu 40 Acres Navid Khonsari, Vassiliki Khonsari, and Andres Perez-Duarte Block Party Bodega Vanessa Keith Year 2180 Gayle Stevens Volunteer Award Carlos Sanchez.
From: deadline
URL: https://deadline.com/2023/01/sundance-film-festival-awards-2023-winners-list-1235241722/
