The Sundance Film Festival revealed award winners for its 2022 edition Friday. Like the rest of this year’s festival, which was forced to go all-virtual because of the recent Omicron surge, the awards ceremony played out on Twitter, with honors spread around across the diverse lineup unlike last year, when CODA swept the top honors.
Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny won the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, while the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize went to The Exiles directed by Ben Klein and Violet Columbus. Marquee Audience Awards wins went to Apple’s big sales pickup Cha Cha Real Smooth, and the surprise secrent-screening documentary Navalny, which won both the Audience Award in the U.S. Doc section as well as the omnibus Festival Favorite Award.
Winners were announced in the U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Dramatic and World Documentary competitions as well as the Next and the Short Film sidebars. Audience Awards, Grand Jury and Special Jury Prizes were bestowed. See the complete winners list below.
Top U.S. winner Nanny, a horror-thriller, centers on Aisha (Anna Diop), an immigrant piecing together a new life in New York City while caring for the child of an Upper East Side family. She is forced to confront a concealed truth that threatens to shatter her precarious American Dream. Michelle Monaghan and Sinqua Walls also star.
“For this Grand Jury Prize we celebrate a movie that flooded us with its compassionate and horrifying portrayal of a mother being separated from her child,” Sundance juror Chelsea Bernard said during the virtual ceremony. “This film cannot be contained by any one genre —it’s visually stunning, masterfully acted, impeccably designed from sound to visual effects, and the overall vision, expertly guided by Nikyatu Jusu, comes together offering its audience an electrifying experience.”
The Exiles revolves around activist and documentary filmmaker Christine Choy, who filmed the leaders of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement during the 1989 massacre. Midway through production, the project was abandoned and the footage was all but forgotten. In Exiles, she returns to the never before seen archive, and the stories of three key figures during the protests, who remain political exiles to this day.
Navalny, meanwhile, is a documentary thriller directed by Daniel Roher hailing from CNN Films and HBO Max. It focuses on Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who gave Roher unparalleled access to him and his inner circle as he was recovering from being poisoned and decides to return home.
Among other notable winners tonight: a Grand Jury Prize in the World Dramatic competition going to Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama from Bolivia, one of the festival raves from Deadline’s Todd McCarthy (read his review here). Finland’s Girl Picture won the Audience Award in that section.
The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in the U.S. Dramatic section went to K.D. Dávila for her comedic thriller Emergency, while Jamie Dack took the Director prize in that section for Palm Trees and Power Lines.
Last year’s awards solidified the bona fides of CODA, which played in the U.S. Dramatic Competition and was swept up by Apple in a fest-record $25 million deal. That pic, directed by Siân Heder, also swept on the fest’s awards night, taking four trophies in all including the Audience Award, Directing award, the Grand Jury Prize and a Special Jury Prize for the ensemble. It’s now an Oscar frontrunner.
This year, the real-life drama 892 took the U.S. ensemble prize in the lineup for a cast led by John Boyega, Nicole Beharie, Selenis Leyva, Connie Britton, Olivia Washington, London Covington and the late Michael K Williams.
Overall, this year’s class has been tougher to gauge, with acquisition activity somewhat muted and in-person reactions to Park City screenings not a factor. Still, Deadline broke big deals led again by Apple, which paid $15 million for world rights to Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth.
In other spotlight deals in the market, Searchlight Pictures closed a deal for around $7.5 million for U.S. rights to Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack, while Sony Pictures Classics paid about $5 million for North American and some international territory rights to the Bill Nighy-starrer Living.
On the documentary side, National Geographic picked up Fire of Love in a mid-seven-figure world rights deal, then followed that by acquiring The Territory. The latter pic, scored an Audience Award win tonight in the World Documentary lineup as well as a Special Jury Award for documentary craft going to director Alex Pritz.
Here’s the full list of winners. Click on the title to read Deadline’s review if available.
FESTIVAL FAVORITE AWARD
Navalny
Director: Daniel Roher
U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Audience Award
Cha Cha Real Smooth
Director-Writer: Cooper Raiff
Grand Jury Award
Nanny
Director-Writer: Nikyatu Jusu
Directing
Jamie Dack
Palm Trees and Power Lines
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award
K.D. Dávila
Emergency
Special Jury Award: Ensemble Cast
John Boyega, Nicole Beharie, Selenis Leyva, Connie Britton, Olivia Washington, London Covington and Michael K Williams
892
Special Jury Award: Uncompromising Artistic Vision
Bradley Rust Gray
blood
U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Audience Award
Navalny
Director: Daniel Roher
Grand Jury Prize
The Exiles (U.S.)
Directors: Ben Klein, Violet Columbus
Directing
Reid Davenport
I Didn’t See You There
Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award
Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput
Fire Of Love
Special Jury Award: Impact for Change
Aftershock
Directors: Paula Eiselt, Tonya Lewis Lee
Special Jury Award: Creative Vision
Descendant
Director: Margaret Brown
WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Audience Award
The Territory (Brazil/Denmark/U.S.)
Grand Jury Prize
All That Breathes (India/UK)
Director: Shaunak Sen
Directing
Simon Lereng Wilmont
A House Made Of Splinters (Denmark)
Special Jury Award: Documentary Craft
The Territory (Brazil/Denmark/U.S.)
Director: Alex Pritz
Special Jury Award: Excellence In Verité Filmmaking
Midwives (Myanmar)
Director: Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing
WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Audience Award
Girl Picture (Finland)
Director: Alli Haapasalo
Grand Jury Prize
Utama (Bolvia/Uruguay/France)
Director-Writer: Alejandro Loayza Grisi
Directing
Maryna Er Gorbach
Klondike (Ukraine/Turkey)
Special Jury Award: Innovative Spirit
Leonor Will Never Die (Philippines)
Director-Writer: Martika Ramirez Escobar
Special Jury Award: Acting
Teresa Sánchez
Dos Estaciones (Mexico)
NEXT
Audience Award
Framing Agnes (Canada/U.S.)
Director: Chase Joynt
SHORT FILMS AWARDS
Grand Jury Prize
The Headhunter’s Daughter (Philippines)
Director-Writer: Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan
Jury Award: U.S. Fiction
If I Go Will They Miss Me (U.S.)
Director-writer: Walter Thompson-Hernández
Jury Award: International Fiction
Warsha (France/Lebanon)
Director-writer: Dania Bdeir
Jury Award: Nonfiction
Displaced (Kosovo)
Director-writer: Samir Karahoda
Jury Award: Animation
Night Bus (Taiwan)
Director-writer: Joe Hsieh
Special Jury Award: Ensemble Cast
Zélia Duncan, Bruna Linzmeyer, Camila Rocha, Clarissa Ribeiro and Lorre Motta
A wild patience has taken me here (Brazil)
Director-writer: Érica Sarmet
Special Jury Award: Screenwriting
Sara Driver
Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver (U.S.)
Directors: Lewie Kloster, Noah Kloster; Writer: Sara Driver
PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED WINNERS
Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize
After Yang
Sundance Institute | Amazon Studios Producers Award for Nonfiction
Su Kim, Free Chol Soo Lee (U.S. Documentary Competition)
Sundance Institute | Amazon Studios Producers Award for Fiction
Amanda Marshall, God’s Country (Premieres)
Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Editing Nonfiction
Toby Shimin
Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Editing Fiction
Dody Dorn
Sundance Institute | NHK Award
Hasan Hadi, The President’s Cake
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