The Birth of a Nation, Nate Parker’s film about the Nat Turner slave revolt, won both the US dramatic audience award and the grand jury prize at the 32nd Sundance film festival awards.
Nate Parker described the Sundance experience as being like a “summer camp … with magical camp counselors”. Parker also picked up the audience award for The Birth of a Nation, which was bought by Fox Searchlight for a record $17.5m after a bidding war with Netflix.
The directing award went to Swiss Army Man, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s divisive film which featured Daniel Radcliffe’s farting corpse and saw walkouts. Dawn Porter’s film Trapped, which focuses on abortion rights, was also recognised with a special jury prize in the documentary section.
Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, who premiered his film Hunt for the Wilderpeople at this year’s festival, hosted the awards and was a gregarious presence, introducing himself with self-effacing remarks about how much money his films have made and how many of his films have premiered at Sundance (four).
Weiner won the grand jury prize for best documentary at the festival in Park City, Utah. The directing duo of Josh Kreigman and Elyse Steinberg gained unbelievable access to Anthony Weiner’s disastrous mayoral campaign in 2013.
The world cinema dramatic competition went to Elite Zexer, with her film Sand Storm, about a bedouin community, while Felix van Groeningen won the directing award for his film Belgica.
Sonita, the story of an Iranian rapper, won the grand jury prize in the world cinema documentary competition, while Michał Marczak picked up the directing award for All These Sleepless Nights.
As revealed earlier in the week, Jim Cummings won the short film-making award for his film Thunder Road.
The 32nd Sundance film festival ends Sunday.
