by Helen Barlow
The Sundance Film Festival had a wide variety in its awards this year. There was no dominance of one film as had happened with Minari in 2020 or Fruitvale Station in 2013. It will be interesting to see if any film figures in the 2024 Oscars, as happened with CODA, last year’s best picture winner (and the winner of three more Oscars), which first won four awards at Sundance.
Here is a rundown of the main 2023 Awards.
Charlotte Regan’s UK drama Scrapper won in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Its portrayal of a wayward father (Harris Dickinson from Triangle of Sadness) who re-connects with his 12-year-old daughter (a stand-out Lola Campbell) is touching. Though far better was Noora Niasari’s Australian film Shayda, starring Cannes winner Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Holy Spider) as an Iranian woman in an Australian women’s refuge with her six-year-old daughter (Selina Zahednia) another stand-out) as she tries to build a life away from her abusive husband. The film won the section’s audience award.
The US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize went to A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, about a mum who kidnaps her son from the foster care system. The US Audience Dramatic award, as well as the screenwriting award, went to Maryam Keshavarz’s Persian Lessons, which again followed an Iranian women’s theme, though in a more upbeat manner, as a modern young Iranian-American woman tries to connect with her mother.
Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson’s Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, won in the US Documentary section. It focuses on the legendary black poet, Nikki Giovanni, as she reflects on her life and legacy. The US Documentary Audience award went to Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia, which uses hidden camera footage of families attempting to escape oppression from North Korea to reveal a world most of us have never seen.
The World Cinema Documentary award went to Maite Alberdi for the Chilean film, The Eternal Memory, which follows a couple who have been together for 25 years and grapple with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary went to Ukrainian director Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol. The film follows a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggling to continue their work documenting the war’s atrocities.
A US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision was presented to the creative team of Magazine Dreams. Written and directed by Elijah Bynum, the film, produced by Jennifer Fox and Dan Gilroy, features a harrowing star turn from Jonathan Majors as an amateur bodybuilder whose relentless drive for recognition pushes him to the brink. Majors is having a major moment, as is his physique. He also plays supervillain Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and the boxer who takes on Michael B. Jordan’s Creed in the Rocky spin-off, Creed III.
Sophie Barthes’s The Pod Generation won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Sundance Institute Awards for Science-in-Film Initiative. Set in the near future and adventurous in its scope, the film stars Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) as a woman wanting to have a baby externally, in a pod, as she is too busy in her job. Her husband (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is not so keen, but they go ahead in any case.
A US Dramatic Special Jury Award: Ensemble was presented to the cast of Theatre Camp starring Molly Gordon, Ben Platt and Noah Galvin. Directed by Gordon and Nick Lieberman, while real life couple Platt and Galvin co-wrote the screenplay, it follows students at a theatre camp having to face the fact that the camp’s founder, Joan (Amy Sedaris) has fallen into a coma without raising funds for the summer. Will Ferrell is among the producers and the fun film was quickly snapped up by Searchlight Pictures.
The festival gave two acting awards. In the US Dramatic section, Lio Mehiel won for his role as Fena in Mutt, where over the course of a single hectic day in New York City, three people from his past are thrust back into his life, after they had lost touch since he transitioned from female to male. In the World Cinema Dramatic, Rosa Marchant won for the Belgian film When It Melts written and directed by Veerle Baetens.
The Innovator Award and the Audience Award in the NEXT section went to D. Smith’s US documentary Kokomo City which follows four black transgender sex workers exploring the dichotomy between the black community and themselves. The Innovator jury commended the film “for taking the traditional ‘talking heads’ documentary structure and opening it up with the use of camera, sound, editing techniques, and imagery to create a dazzling journey with a fluidity that is entirely new.”
