The 2016 SXSW film festival awarded its top prizes on Tuesday in Austin, Texas.
The Arbalest, from first-time film-maker Adam Pinney, won the grand jury prize for narrative feature. Past winners of the award include Short Term 12 – the indie film that put Brie Larson on the map before Room won her an Oscar – and last year’s family drama Krisha, which opens this Friday in the US. Pinney’s film centers on a famed 1970s toy inventor and his lifelong obsession with a woman named Sylvia Frank.
The narrative jury also handed acting awards to Andre Royo for Hunter Gatherer and American Horror Story actor Lily Rabe, who plays a high-school English teacher in Miss Stevens.
In the documentary competition, the equivalent top prize went to Keith Maitland’s Tower. The film combines interviews, archival footage and animation to reconstruct the sniper shootings at the University of Texas on 1 August 1996. Maitland’s documentary also netted the Louis Black Lone Star Award, given annually to a Texas-produced film.
My Blind Brother, in which Adam Scott and Nick Kroll play two brothers vying for the same woman (played by Jenny Slate), meanwhile collected the Gamechanger Award, presented to its director, Sophie Goodhart.
The awards ceremony was hosted by director-comedian Mike Birbiglia (Sleepwalk With Me), whose film Don’t Think Twice premiered earlier in the week at the event.
The 23rd annual SXSW film festival broadcast more than 140 feature films, including 89 world premieres, 12 North American premieres and eight US premieres. Audience awards will be announced on Saturday.
