Sundance Film Festival awards its top movie prizes

Park City, Utah - The Sundance Film Festival awarded its grand jury prize on Friday to In the Summers, a tale of two sisters' visits to their father in New Mexico, written and directed by Alessandra Lacorazza.

Leslie Grace, Lio Mehiel, Alessandra Lacorazza, Rene Perez Joglar, Sasha Calle, and Sharlene Cruz attend the In The Summers premiere during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Leslie Grace, Lio Mehiel, Alessandra Lacorazza, Rene Perez Joglar, Sasha Calle, and Sharlene Cruz attend the In The Summers premiere during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.  © MATT WINKELMEYER / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP

The festival, in Park City, Utah, also announced that The Porcelain War, directed by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev, took the US documentary grand jury prize. The film is a check-in with artists living amid the war in Ukraine.

Shifting to world cinema, the dramatic grand jury prize went to Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez's Sujo, a coming-of-age story unspooling in the context of Mexican drug cartel violence.

The documentary grand jury prize was awarded to Silje Evensmo Jacobsen for A New Kind of Wilderness, a look at a family living in a remote forest in Norway adjusting to modern life.

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The NEXT innovator award went to Jack Begert's Little Death, a tale of addiction set in Los Angeles.

The festival favorite award – eligible for films across all sections of the lineup – went to Daughters from the US documentary competition, a chronicling of four young girls growing up while their fathers serve sentences in prison.

Sundance hands out audience awards

The cast and crew of Didi attend the movie's premiere during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
The cast and crew of Didi attend the movie's premiere during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.  © Michael loccisano / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

Audience awards went to Dìdi (弟弟), directed by Sean Wang, who was nominated for an Academy Award this week for the documentary short Nai Nai & Wài Pó.

The audience award for US documentary also went to the jury-honored Daughters, with the audience award for the world documentary competition going to the Norwegian film Ibelin directed by Benjamin Ree.

The world cinema's dramatic audience award went to Girls Will Be Girls directed by Shuchi Talati, set at an all-girls' boarding school in the Himalayas. The NEXT audience award was won by Rich Peppiatt's Kneecap, a profile of the Irish-language rap trio of the same name.

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Other jury awards went to Lacorazza for directing In the Summers and Jesse Eisenberg for screenwriting for A Real Pain. Special jury awards went to Dìdi (弟弟) for ensemble performance and, for breakthrough performance, to Nico Parker for Suncoast.

In the US documentary competition, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie won the directing prize for Sugarcane, Carla Gutiérrez won for editing Frida, and a special jury prize was awarded for the sound work on Gaucho Gaucho. A special jury award for the "art of change" went to Union, a film about the rise of the Amazon Labor Union.

In the world cinema dramatic competition, an additional award went to Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi for directing In the Land of Brothers. A special jury prize for original music was issued to Peter Raeburn for Handling the Undead, and a special jury prize for acting went to Preeti Panigrahi for Girls Will Be Girls.

For world cinema documentary, Benjamin Ree won the directing prize for Ibelin. A special jury award for craft went to Nocturnes. A prize for cinematic innovation went to Johan Grimonprez for Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat. A special jury prize for NEXT went to Desire Lines.

The 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival concludes on Sunday.

Cover photo: MATT WINKELMEYER / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP

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