Courtney Hunt's Frozen River, a thriller about two economically strapped women (Melissa Leo and Misty Upham, above) who turn to immigrant-smuggling at the US-Canada border, was chosen best American narrative feature at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. (In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan calls Leo and Upham "magnificent," adding that Frozen River is a "powerful story that makes strong emotional connections.")
Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's Trouble the Water, which depicts the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, was the best US documentary. In Trouble the Water, New Orleans residents are forced to rely on themselves as the government that is supposed to represent them duly ignores their plight.
James Marsh's Man on Wire won both the jury and the audience awards for best world documentary. The film shows French aerialist Philippe Petit's 1974 walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center and his subsequent arrest.
Josh Tickell's Fields of Fuel (above), about environmentally friendly alternative fuels and the dire consequences of Americans' oil addiction, won the audience prize for best US documentary.
The audience award for best US narrative film went to Jonathan Levine's The Wackness, which revolves around the relationship between a teenage marijuana dealer who trades pot for therapy sessions with a psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley) who happens to have a cute daughter.
Both Frozen River and The Wackness will by distributed by Sony Classics in the US.
Directed by Jens Jonsson (right), the Swedish King of Ping Pong was the best world narrative feature. In the film, a bullied, ping-pong expert teenager and his popular younger brother fight it off while dark family secrets come to the surface. Jonsson also co-wrote the screenplay with Hans Gunnarsson.
Lance Hammer was named the best director of a US-made narrative feature for Ballast, which is also in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Ballast, about the lasting effects of a suicide on those left behind in a small Mississippi Delta town, also won the award for best cinematography in a narrative feature for Lol Crawley.
The world cinema directing award for a narrative film was presented to Anna Melikyan for the Russian Mermaid, about a shy little girl who grows up believing she has the power to make wishes come true. As a grown woman, however, reality interferes.
Amin Matalqa's Captain Abu Raed, Jordan's first feature in five decades, received the audience award in the world cinema dramatic category. The film follows an aging airport janitor who is mistaken for an airline pilot at a poor community where he proceeds to tell fantastic stories about his trips.
Another Jordanian film, Mahmoud al Massad's Recycle, won the world cinema cinematography award for documentaries. Recycle is a portrait of a poor Jordanian family man living in the hometown of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, at one point the purported al-Qaeda leader in Iraq.
The best screenplay award was given to Alex Rivera (who also directed, right) and David Riker for the Mexican-American co-production Sleep Dealer, described as a story "set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences." In the film, three strangers risk their lives to break down those barriers.
Sleep Dealer also received the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, handed out to "an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character." The Sloan Prize carries a US$20,000 cash award.
A world cinema special jury prize for a narrative feature was awarded to Ernesto Contreras, director of the Mexican Blue Eyelids, about a woman who must come to terms with her emotional neediness, while the cast of Choke — Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald, Brad Henke — was voted a special jury prize for their performances. Based on Chuck Palahniuk's novel, Clark Gregg's Choke is described as a "sardonic story about mother and son relationship, fear of aging, sexual addiction, and the dark side of historical theme parks."
In the short film category, the jury prize went to two films: Daniel Robin's My Olympic Summer and Andrew Okpeaha MacLean's On the Ice. Among the shorts that received special mention were Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega's Oscar nominated La Corona and The Vikings' W. (right).
It should be noted that there was no apparent nepotism at awards time: Amy Redford's The Guitar, about a young woman who tries to live life to the fullest after giving two more months on this planet, won no awards. (For those who don't know, Amy is the daughter of Sundance founder Robert Redford.)
Also, Hamlet 2, which was reportedly sold for US$10 million, was nowhere to be found in the awards list. Considering that it was submitted after the official line-up had been announced, it's possible that Andrew Fleming's comedy wasn't up for any awards.