Sex-Starved Housewife Comedy, Euthanasia Doc Among Sundance Winners

Sundance Film Festival Awards: Oregon Euthanasia Documentary and Binational Romantic Drama

Time for some Oscar 2012 predictions. Earlier this evening, the Sundance Film Festival announced the winners of its 2011 edition.

Drake Doremus’ romantic drama Like Crazy, about a young American and his young British lover who are forced to live apart after she overstays her visa in the US, won the jury award in the US dramatic category. As the Englishwoman, Felicity Jones won the festival’s special award for acting.

Peter Richardson’s How to Die in Oregon, described as a “sober” look at euthanasia – a woman takes an overdose of drugs and dies on camera – was the jury’s best US documentary.

The best World dramatic entry was Anne Sewitsky’s Norwegian comedy Happy, Happy, about a married woman whose sexual appetites are reawakened by a new neighbor.

The winner in the World documentary category was Danfung Dennis’ Anglo-American Hell and Back Again, about a marine who returns home after being seriously injured in Afghanistan.

Among this year’s Oscar nominees that premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival are Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, and Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine.

2011 Sundance Film Festival winners

Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic
Like Crazy

Grand Jury Prize, Documentary
How to Die in Oregon

World Cinema Jury Prize, Dramatic
Happy, Happy

World Cinema Jury Prize, Documentary
Hell and Back Again

Dramatic Audience Award
Circumstance

Documentary Audience Award
Buck

World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award
Kinyarwanda

World Cinema Documentary Audience Award
Senna

The Best of NEXT Audience Award
to.get.her

Directing Award, Dramatic
Martha Marcy May Marlene, directed by Sean Durkin

Directing Award, Documentary
Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, directed by Jon Foy

World Cinema Directing Award, Dramatic
Tyrannosaur, directed by Paddy Considine

World Cinema Directing Award, Documentary
Project Nim, directed by James Marsh

Waldo Scott Screenwriting Award
Another Happy Day

World Cinema Screenwriting Award
Restoration

Documentary Editing Award
If a Tree Falls

World Cinema Documentary Editing Award
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Excellence in Cinematography Award, Dramatic
Pariah

Excellence in Cinematography Award, Documentary
The Redemption of General Butt Naked

World Cinema Cinematography Award, Dramatic
All Your Dead Ones

World Cinema Cinematography Award, Documentary
Hell and Back Again

Special Jury Prize: Dramatic (Acting)
Felicity Jones for Like Crazy

Special Jury Prize: Dramatic
Another Earth

Special Jury Prize: Documentary
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary
Position Among the Stars

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Dramatic
Tyrannosaur, for acting

Alfred P. Sloan Prize
Another Earth, directed by Mike Cahill

Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award
Cherien Dabis

The Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking
Brick Novax pt 1 and 2, written and directed by Matt Piedmont

The Jury Prize in International Short Filmmaking
Deeper Than Yesterday, written and directed by Ariel Kleiman

The Shorts Jury Honorable Mentions in Short Filmmaking
Choke, written and directed by Michelle Latimer
Diarchy, written and directed by Ferdinando Cito Filmomarinoes.
The External World, written and directed by David O’Reilly
The Legend of Beaver Dam, directed by Jerome Sable; written by Jerome Sable and Eli Batalion
Out of Reach, written and directed by Jakub Stozek
Protoparticles, written and directed by Chema García Ibarra

Sundance Film Festival 2011 lineup

Sundance Film Festival topics ranged from the issues facing sex-starved housewives in Scandinavia and Iran’s violent 2009 elections to Mexican movie-house robbers and the imminent end of the world. All that, plus veteran Marina Vlady (The Conjugal Bed, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her) in Amor Hakkar’s gay-themed French entry A Few Days of Respite.

Below is a partial list of the dozens of Sundance movies in competition in the festival’s four main categories.

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION

All Your Dead Ones (Todos tus muertos) / Colombia
Director: Carlos Moreno; Screenplay: Alonso Torres & Carlos Moreno.
Cast: Alvaro Rodríguez, Jorge Herrera, Martha Marquez, Harold Devasten, John Alex Castillo.

The Cinema Hold Up (Asalto al cine) | Mexico
Director: Iría Gómez Concheiro; Screenplay: Iria Gómez Concheiro & Juan Pablo Gómez
Four childhood friends in Mexico’s Guerrero colony toy with the idea of robbing a cinema. Each hopes that the heist will hurtle them past life’s obstacles, only to realize that the caper risks the only thing they have: their friendship.
Cast: Gabino Rodríguez, Juan Pablo de Santiago, Ángel Sosa, Paulina Avalos.

A Few Days of Respite (Quelque Jours de Repit) / Algeria, France
Direction & Screenplay: Amor Hakkar.
A pair of gay men who have escaped from Iran seek safe harbor in a small French village, where a lonely middle-aged woman offers aid.
Cast: Marina Vlady, Samir Guesmi, Amor Hakkar.

The Guard / Ireland
Direction & Screenplay: John Michael McDonagh.
A small-town cop in Ireland has a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humor, a fondness for prostitutes and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international drug-smuggling ring that has brought a straight-laced FBI agent to his door. However, a surreal chain of events pulls him into the action.
Cast: Don Cheadle, Brendan Gleeson, Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot, Fionnula Flanagan.

Happy, Happy (Sykt Lykkelig) / Norway
Director: Anne Sewitsky; Screenplay: Ragnhild Tronvoll.
A perfect housewife, who just happens to be sex-starved, struggles to keep her emotions in check when an attractive family moves in next door.
Cast: Agnes Kittelsen, Henrik Rafaelsen, Maibritt Saerens, Joachim Rafaelsen.

Kinyarwanda / Rwanda, USA
Direction & Screenplay: Alrick Brown.
Based on accounts from survivors, Kinyarwanda tells the story of Rwandans who crossed the lines of hatred during the 1994 genocide, turning mosques into places of refuge for Muslims and Christians, Hutus and Tutsis.
Cast: Edouard Bamporiki, Cassandra Freeman, Cleophas Kabasiita, Hadidja Zaninka, Kennedy Mazimpaka, Hassan Kabera.

Lost Kisses (I baci mai dati) | Italy (Director: Roberta Torre; Screenplay: Roberta Torre & Laura Nuccilli) – A 13-year-old girl in the deprived outskirts of a sprawling Sicilian city becomes a local celebrity to her needy community when word spreads that she just might be able to perform miracles.
Cast: Donatella Finocchiaro, Pino Micol, Giuseppe Fiorello, Carla Marchese, Martina Galletta, Tony Palazzo.

Restoration (Boker Tov Adon Fidelman) / Israel (Director: Yossi Madmoni; Screenplay: Erez Kav-El) – Aided by a young and mysterious apprentice, an antique furniture restorer struggles to keep his workshop alive, while his relationship with his own estranged son, who is trying to close down the shop, begins to disintegrate.
Cast: Sasson Gabay, Henry David, Nevo Kimchi, Sarah Adler.

The Salesman / Le Vendeur (Canada)
Direction & Screenplay: Sébastien Pilote.
Cast: Gilbert Sicotte, Nathalie Cavezzali.
Car salesman Marcel Lévesque operates by the rules of a bygone era, turning on the charm to make his quota. But the increasing decline of his fading industrial town threatens to plummet this peddler of dreams into an unfriendly reality.

Ticket to Paradise / Boleto al paraíso (Cuba)
Director: Gerardo Chijona Valdes.
Cast: Miriel Cejas, Héctor Medina, Dunia Matos, Jorge Perugorria.

Tyrannosaur (U.K.)
Direction & Screenplay: Paddy Considine.
Cast: Peter Mullan, Eddie Marsan, Olivia Colman.

Vampire | Japan, Canada (Dir. & Scr.: Iwai Shunji) – On the surface, Simon seems like a fairly normal, average young man, devoted to his teaching job and ailing mother. Secretly, he is compelled to hunt through online chat rooms and message boards, searching for the perfect girl who will ensure his own survival.
Cast: Kevin Zegers, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rachel Leigh Cook, Kristin Kreuk, Yu Aoi, and Adelaide Clemens.

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U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

BEING ELMO: A Puppeteer’s Journey (Dir.: Constance Marks)
Cast: Kevin Clash.

Buck (Dir.: Cindy Meehl)

Hot Coffee (Dir.: Susan Saladoff)

How to Die in Oregon (Dir.: Peter D. Richardson)

The Redemption of General Butt Naked (Dir.: Eric Strauss & Daniele Anastasion)

Sing Your Song (Dir.: Susanne Rostock)

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WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

An African Election | Switzerland, U.S.A. (Director: Jarreth Merz) – The 2008 presidential elections in Ghana, West Africa, serve as a backdrop for this feature documentary that looks behind the scenes at the complex, political machinery of a third-world democracy struggling to avoid civil war and establish stability for good.

Family Portrait in Black and White | Canada (Director: Julia Ivanova) – In a small Ukrainian town, Olga Nenya, raises 16 black orphans amidst a population of Slavic blue-eyed blondes. Their stories expose the harsh realities of growing up as a bi-racial child in Eastern Europe.

The Flaw | U.K. (Director: David Sington) – Within a few months in 2008, several American financial institutions failed, and before you knew it the U.S.A. was in the red. An imaginative blend of archive, animation and personal stories delivers a devastating indictment of the unfettered capitalism which has led to crippling, catastrophic income inequality in the land of the free.

The Green Wave (Irans grüner Sommer) | Germany (Director: Ali Samadi Ahadi) – Animated blogs and tweets tell the story of democracy under fire and hopes dashed as protesters are arrested, tortured and raped during Iran’s tumultuous elections of June 2009.

Hell and Back Again / U.S.A., U.K. (Director: Danfung Dennis) – Told through the eyes of one Marine from the start of his 2009 Aghanistan tour to his distressing return and rehabilitation in the U.S., we witness what modern “unconventional” warfare really means to the men who are fighting it.

Position Among the Stars (Stand van de Sterren) / Netherlands (Director: Leonard Retel Helmrich) – The effects of globalization in Indonesia’s rapidly changing society ripple into the life of a poor Christian woman living in the slums of Jakarta with her Muslim sons and teenage granddaughter.

Project Nim | U.K. (Director: James Marsh) – From the Oscar-winning team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who was taught to communicate with language as he was raised and nurtured like a human child.

Senna | U.K. (Director: Asif Kapadia; Screenwriter: Manish Pandey) – The story of the legendary racing driver and Brazilian hero Ayrton Senna takes us on the ultimate journey of what it means to become the greatest when faced with the constant possibility of death.

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U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION

Another Earth (Director: Mike Cahill; Screenplay: Mike Cahill & Brit Marling) – On the eve of the discovery of a duplicate Earth, a horrible tragedy irrevocably alters the lives of two strangers, who begin an unlikely love affair.
Cast: William Mapother, Brit Marling, Jordan Baker.

Benavides Born (Director: Amy Wendel; Screenplay: Daniel Meisel & Amy Wendel) – A high school senior in a forgotten town has earned admission to the University of Texas at Austin but can’t afford to go. Her one shot is a scholarship for winning the State Powerlifting Championship.
Cast: Corina Calderon, Jeremy Ray Valdez.

Circumstance/U.S.A., Iran (Dir. & Scr.: Maryam Keshavarz) – A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager’s growing sexual rebellion and her brother’s dangerous obsession.
Cast: Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy.

Gun Hill Road (Dir. & Scr.: Rashaad Ernesto Green) – After three years in prison, Enrique is back in his beloved Bronx, back in the arms of an estranged wife and back in the life of his teenage son, who is stumbling towards a transformation that will put the bonds of their embattled family to the test.
Cast: Esai Morales, Judy Reyes.

HERE (Director: Braden King; Screenplay: Braden King & Dani Valent) – On assignment to create a new, more accurate satellite survey of Armenia, an American cartographer forms a powerful bond with an Armenian expatriate and art photographer.
Cast: Ben Foster, Lubna Azabal.

Higher Ground (Director: Vera Farmiga; Screenplay: Carolyn S. Briggs & Tim Metcalfe) – A frustrated young mother turns to a fundamentalist community for answers, but after years of dogma and loss, she must find the courage to ask the questions that will help her reclaim her life. Cast: Vera Farmiga, Joshua Leonard, John Hawkes, Dagmara Dominczyk.

Homework (Dir. & Scr.: Gavin Wiesen) – Quirky, rebellious George has no ambitions other than to cut his next class. But one day, one girl gives him the perfect reason to figure out who he really is.
Cast: Freddie Highmore, Emma Roberts, Michael Angarano, Elizabeth Reaser, Rita Wilson, Blair Underwood.

The Ledge (Dir. & Scr.: Matthew Chapman) – Perched on a ledge, a man says he must jump by noon, while a cop races against time to get to the bottom of it.
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Terrence Howard.

Like Crazy (Director: Drake Doremus; Screenplay: Drake Doremus and Ben York Jones) – A young American guy and a young British girl meet in college and fall in love. Their love is tested when she is required to leave the country and they must face the challenges of a long-distance relationship.
Cast: Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlie Bewley, Alex Kingston.

Little Birds (Dir. & Scr.: Elgin James) – Amidst the stark landscape of the Salton Sea, two 15-year-old girls test the limits of their friendship when one follows the other to Los Angeles, only to discover that the boredom of home may be better than learning to survive in the big city.
Cast: Juno Temple, Kay Panabaker, Leslie Mann, Kate Bosworth, Kyle Gallner.

The Loved Ones (Dir. & Scr.: Sam Levinson) – A pair of reckless siblings are dragged into a chaotic family wedding by their overwrought mother. Cast: Demi Moore, Kate Bosworth, Jeffrey DeMunn, Ellen Barkin, Ellen Burstyn, Thomas Haden Church.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Dir. & Scr.: Sean Durkin) – Haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia, a damaged woman struggles to re-assimilate with her family after fleeing an abusive cult.
Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Brady Corbet, Hugh Dancy, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson.

Take Shelter (Dir. & Scr.: Jeff Nichols) – A working-class husband and father questions whether his terrifying dreams of an apocalyptic storm signal something real to come or the onset of an inherited mental illness he’s feared his whole life.
Cast: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon, Kathy Baker.

“2011 Sundance Winners” notes

Sundance Film Festival website.

Agnes Kittelsen Happy, Happy image: Maipo Film.