The 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival, which was held from Jan. 5-18, announced this year's award winners at a luncheon at Spencer's Restaurant on Sunday, January 17, the same day as the Golden Globes.
The Audience Award went to Niels Arden Oplev's Guldbagge nominee The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (above, Sweden/Denmark/Germany), a dark thriller about an investigative journalist trying to solve a four-decade-old murder that may have been the work of a serial killer still on the loose. The runner-up was The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner (Bulgaria/Germany/Slovenia), one of the nine semi-finalists for the 2010 best foreign language film Oscar.
Other audience narrative favorites include: Backyard (Mexico), Bride Flight (Netherlands), For a Moment, Freedom (Austria/France), the Jim Carrey-Ewan McGregor vehicle I Love You Phillip Morris (USA/France), Max Manus (Norway/Denmark/Germany), A Matter of Size (Israel/France/Germany), The Over the Hill Band (Belgium), Today's Special (USA), White Wedding (South Africa) and another Oscar semi-finalist, Winter in Wartime (Netherlands/Lithuania).
Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith's The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (USA), one of the semi-finalists in the Academy's documentary feature category, received the Palm Springs festival's Audience Award for best non-fiction film. The documentary chronicles the efforts of Daniel Ellsberg, who smuggled a top-secret report about the history of the Vietnam War out of a safe in his office and into the pages of the New York Times.
The runner-up was Inside Hana's Suitcase (Canada/Czech Republic). Other audience documentary favorites include: The Art of the Steal (USA), Dumbstruck (USA/Japan/Bahamas), The Great Contemporary Art Bubble (UK/Germany/France/Netherlands), Learning from Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei (USA/Qatar), Nobody's Perfect (Germany), On These Shoulders We Stand (USA), Only When I Dance (UK/Brazil), Oscar semi-finalist Sergio (USA), Soundtrack for a Revolution (USA), The Sun Behind The Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom (India/UK/USA/Austria) and The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls (New Zealand).
Photo: Noomi Rapace in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Nordisk Films)