This weekend marks the conclusion of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, the fest’s second consecutive virtual offering in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And since you can’t have a film festival without all those juicy film festival awards to pop onto posters and into the opening text of movie trailers, the (technically, still) Park City-set event also held its annual prize ceremony today.
(Reminder that, if any of the following movies sound interesting, odd, or unfamiliar, the inestimable A.A. Dowd and Katie Rife have been issuing daily dispatches from the Festival, covering many of its most interesting virtual offerings. You can catch up on their coverage of The Princess, When You Finish Saving The World, Lena Dunham’s Sharp Stick, 892, Palm Trees And Power Lines, Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul, Call Jane, After Yang, Something In The Dirt, and many more by following those links to their logical conclusions.)
Like the Golden Globes earlier this month, Sundance announced its winners via Twitter today. The roll-out began with the Festival’s short film awards, with the Short Film Grand Jury Prize going to Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan’s The Headhunter’s Daughter. Other winners in the category included If I Go Will They Miss Me (Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction) and WARSHA (Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction).
Next up: The World Cinema categories for Documentary and Drama, with Grand Jury Prizes in their respective sections going to Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes (about two brothers who are attempting to save the Indian Black Kite from pollution and possible extinction) and Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama.
Meanwhile, over in the U.S. awards, the Audience Award for Drama went to Cha Cha Real Smooth (which has already been picked up by Apple), while its Documentary counterpart went to the Russia-focused Navalny. Special Jury Awards also went out to Bradley Rust Gray’s blood (for “Uncompromising Artistic Vision”), the cast of 892, and documentaries Aftershock and Descendent.
Finally, the awards for Directing went to Jamie Duck for Palm Trees And Power Lines and Reid Davenport for I Didn’t See You There (for drama and documentary, respectively.) Christine Choy’s Tiananmen Square documentary The Exiles took home the Grand Jury Prize in its category, while Nikyatu Jusu’s supernatural thriller Nanny took home the big prize in drama. Here’s an excerpt from Dowd’s write-up of the film:
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