Festivals

Sundance Film Festival 2008

Strong Field of Films Shares the Wealth At Awards Ceremony

Park City, UT -– The winners of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prizes, World Cinema Jury Prizes, and Audience Awards were announced January 27th at the closing ceremony in Park City, Utah.

Courtney Hunt's Frozen River, about a desperate trailer mom and an Mohawk Indian girl who team up to smuggle illegal immigrants, won the Grand Jury Prize for Drama, while the Documentary prize went to Tia Lessin/Carl Deal's Trouble The Water, in which an aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband film their experience of being trapped in Katrini devastated New Orleans.

The Audience Award for Drama was captured by Jonathan Levine's The Wackness, in which a troubled teenage drug dealer trades pot for therapy sessions. Josh Tickell's Fields Of Fuel, a look at America's addiction to oil, won the Audience prize for Best Documentary.

In the World Cinema category, the Jury's Dramatic and Cinematography prizes went to "King Of Ping Pong" (Sweden), in which an ostracized and bullied teenager/ping pong whiz clashes with his younger, more popular brother, while James Marsh's Man On Wire (United Kingdom), about French artist Philippe Petit's daring dance on a wire suspended between N.Y.'s Twin Towers, took both the Audience and Jury Documentary awards.

Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer, in which three strangers risk their lives to connect in a near-future, militarized world, captured both the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloane Prize.


THE COMPLETE 2008 AWARD WINNERS

Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic)--"Frozen River" (Courtney Hunt)
Grand Jury Prize (Documentary)--"Trouble The Water" (Tia Lessin and Carl Deal)
World Cinema Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic)--"King Of Ping Pong (Ping Pongkingen)" (Jesn Jonsson/Sweden)
World Cinema Grand Jury Prize (Documentary)--"Man On Wire" (James Marsh/United Kingdom)
Audience Award (Dramatic)--"The Wackness" (Jonathan Levine)
Audience Award (Documentary)--"Fields Of Fuel" (Josh Tickell)
Audience World Cinema (Dramatic)--"Captain Abu Raed" (Amin Matalqa/Jourdan)
Audience World Cinema (Documentary)--"Man On Wire" (James Marsh/United Kingdom)
Directing Award (Dramatic)--"Ballast" (Lance Hammer)
Directing Award (Documentary)--"American Teen" (Nanette Burstein)
World Cinema Directing Award (Dramatic)--"Mermaid (Rusalka)" (Anna Melikyan/Russia)
World Cinema Directing Award (Documentary)--"Durakovo: Village Of Fools" (Nino Kirtadze/France)
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award -- "Mermaid (Rusalka)" (Anna Melikyan/Russia)
World Cinema Screenwriting Award -- "Always Wanted To Be A Gangster" (Samuel Benchetrit/France)
Documentary Editing Award -- "Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired" (Joe Bini)
World Cinema Documentary Editing Award -- "The Art Star and The Sudanese Twins" (Irena Dol/New Zealand)
Cinematography Award (Dramatic)-- "Ballast" (Lol Crawley)
Cinematography Award (Documentary)--"Patti Smith: Dream Of Life" (Phillip Hunt and Steven Sebring)
World Cinema Cinematography Award (Dramatic)-- "King Of Ping Pong (Ping Pongkingen)" (Jesn Jonsson/Sweden)
World Cinema Cinematography Award (Documentary)--"Recycle" (al Massad/Jordan)
Special Jury Prize (Dramatic, Work by an Ensemble Cast)-- "Choke" (Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly MacDonald, Brad Henke)
Special Jury Prize (Dramatic, The Spirit Of Independence)--"Anywhere, U.S.A." (Chusy Haney-Jardine)
Special Jury Prize (Documentary)--"Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo" (Lisa F. Jackson)
World Cinema, Special Jury Prize (Dramatic)-- "Blue Eyelids (Parpados Azules)" (Ernesto Contreras/Mexico)
Alfred P. Sloane Prize --"Sleep Dealer" (Alex Rivera)
Short Filmmaking Grand Jury Prize--
"My Olympic Summer" (Daniel Robin) / "Sikumi (On The Ice)" (Andrew Okpeaha MacLean)
Short Filmmaking Grand Jury Prize (International)-- "Soft" (Simon Ellis)
Short Filmmaking (Honorable Mention)--
"Aquarium" (Rob Meyer)
"La Corona (The Crown)" (Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega)
"Oiran Lyrics" (Ryosuke Ogawa)
"Spider" (Nash Edgerton)
"Suspension" (Nicolas Provost)
"W." (The Vikings)


For more on these films, and the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, go to the Sundance Film Festival Site.