IMDb | Sundance 2012 | Blog

Congratulations to the Winners at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Grand Jury Prize: Documentary – The House I Live In

Directing Award: Dramatic – Middle of Nowhere

Directing Award: U.S. Documentary – The Queen of Versailles

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award – Safety Not Guaranteed

Excellence in Editing Award: U.S Documentary – Detropia

Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S Dramatic – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary – Chasing Ice

Special Jury Prize: Dramatic – Ensemble Cast: The Surrogate

Special Jury Prize: Dramatic – Film Producing: Smashed

Special Jury Prizes: U.S. Documentary – Love Free or Die; Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic – The Surrogate

Audience Award: U.S. Documentary – The Invisible War

World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic – Valley of Saints

World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary – Searching for Sugar Man

Best of Next Audience Award: Sleepwalk with Me

World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Violeta Went to Heaven

World Cinema Directing Award: Dramatic – Teddy Bear

World Cinema Screenwriting Award: Dramatic – Young & Wild

World Cinema Cinematography Award: Dramatic – My Brother the Devil

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Dramatic – Can

World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary – The Law in These Parts

World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary – 5 Broken Cameras

World Cinema Excellence in Editing Award: Documentary – Indie Game: The Movie

World Cinema Cinematography Award: Documentary – Putin’s Kiss

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary – Searching for Sugar Man

Alfred P. Sloan Awards – Robot and Frank; Valley of Saints

Still from The Other Dream Team

I cannot recommend The Other Dream Team highly enough. It is one of the more multi-faceted documentaries I’ve seen in recent memory, weaving together the formation of the 1992 Lithuanian Olympic basketball team, the personal histories of its players, and the sport’s legacy as the country fought for its independence from Russia. The Grateful Dead factor into the events, making the story even more unique; giving it Hoop Dreams appeal is the presence of Jonas Valanciunas, Lithuania native and recent first round NBA draft pick.

The work is also reminiscent of “30 for 30″, and director Marius Markevicius has a couple vets from that ESPN series on his crew. As of this writing, it’s been reported that six studios are chasing distribution rights, while others are — wait for it — vying for the option to remake the documentary into a feature. Hopefully, like Young@Heart, the documentary will find success and the remake will never make it past the development stage.

James Marsh is a heralded documentary filmmaker with Wisconsin Death Trip, Man on Wire, and Project Nim to his credit. He’s also an apt dramatist with the underrated The King and Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980, the best film of that trilogy. His new Belfast-set IRA thriller Shadow Dancer is effective, especially since Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy just proved that slow-burning story mechanics are better than chases, explosions, and shouted exposition. Andrea Riseborough stars as Collette McVeigh, a single mother and active member of the IRA who turns informant for MI5 after an aborted bombing attempt in the London subway system. She falls into the noble hands of Clive Owen‘s mid-level agent, who lays out her ultimatum. Despite bouts of unoriginal dialogue and overt symbolism (Riseborough wears a red trench in almost every scene after she turns mole), traces of familiarity end there. Even Owen’s superior, Gillian Anderson, misinterprets his effort to protect Collette as he goes a bit rogue once he realizes a second, more entrenched informant is in the mix. There are two nice twists at the end, one of them ambiguous.

Room 237 is billed as a “subjective documentary” on hidden meanings in the film version of The Shining. It’s definitely a crowd pleaser for people who think the world will end this year, or those who have played Dark Side of the Moon while watching The Wizard of Oz. Interviewees offer up a series of insights that blur the line between credibility and fanaticism, but director Rodney Ascher, who also edited his work, knows how to respect his cast while entertaining his audience. The notion that Stanley Kubrick created the film as a way of dealing with his feelings about the Holocaust and American imperialism are viable, while some people take what can only be continuity errors to another level of our obsessive search for meaning. More than anything, the documentary is a testament to Ascher’s editing skills, as he recontextualizes footage from Kubrick’s oeuvre with a deft hand. I’m unsure if his work will be picked up for theatrical release, but I think a long shelf life awaits.

LCD Soundsystem leader James Murphy has always come across like a fantastic man on record and in interviews, so imagine how crush-worthy he is in Shut Up and Play the Hits, in which he reflects on his music career to date as LCDSS’s final show approaches. Exuding the kind of cool that comes from humble self-consciousness, Murphy’s answers to writer Chuck Klosterman‘s guiding questions touch on his love of art and community as he illuminates some of the feelings behind his decision to end LCD at a creative zenith. The footage from the Madison Square Garden show is emotional, and you will probably tear up for the 1,000th time during a live rendition of “All My Friends”.

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I had to exit the V/H/S screening about 30 minutes into the feature, not wanting to be the second case of someone passing out during the horror anthology. Ti West is the best known of the directors, but he’s in fit company with David Bruckner, Glenn McQuaid, and others. The premise finds a group of violent guys hired by an unknown person to retrieve a videotape from someone’s property. They are the kind of people you hope meet a horrific fate, and by the end of the first segment, it’s pretty much a given that will happen in time. I hope the demon who looks like a wicked version of River from “Firefly”/Serenity factors into the overall narrative, because gross males need to be disposed of properly. Like her, I am a delicate creature; shaky-cam and hyper-editing are no good for my flora. Perhaps I will have to watch this one segment at a time. There was applause after the first chapter, something I’m sure never occurred once during The Devil Inside‘s opening weekend.

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Beats, Rhymes and Life was one of the best documentaries to emerge from last year’s festival, and it fared well in theaters, too. Ice-T‘s Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap does not seem destined to mirror that success. As co-director and interviewer, the guy who wrote “Cop Killer” and espoused the pimp lifestyle sure does conduct a series of stale interviews.

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Also somewhat zzz is Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, a documentary on the pioneering skateboard crew that included Tony Hawk and Steve Caballero. Of course the 1980s footage is ace and might inspire you to pull out your old Independent Truck Company t-shirt, but director Stacy Peralta made a classic with Dogtown and Z-Boys, and Bones doesn’t achieve the same level of greatness by default.

I have a nasty little cold, which is unsurprising for Sundance, and I went to buy my “Fisherman’s Friend” cough drops in the local store. Ahead of me was a stocky, gregarious looking guy who said to the checkout lady, “Am I glad Sunday is coming.” “Why?” she asked. “End of the festival,” he said, shaking his head.

The good people of Park City endure culture shock once a year as frenetic L.A. denizens descend upon their town with elevated expectations and little patience. The locals refer to festival-attendees as “PIBs: People in Black” though there appears to be less animosity this year. That may be because there has been very little snow and, with no skiers, the tourist trades need an infusion of cash, even if it’s from the PIBs.

Anyway, the guy in front of me was obviously someone who used the pejorative “PIB.” But I had to wonder, what did he do to make him so long for the end of the week? He looked too tired and too dirty to be either a driver or a bartender. He didn’t look big enough to be bouncer; those guys are huge. I gave up.

“What do you do?” I asked him.

“I clean hot tubs,” he said. “What I had to do this morning you don’t even want to know.”

Here’s to Sunday, my good man.

I usually have a problem when critics rip a documentary for being “a bunch of talking heads” because, honestly, watching people talk about their lives and their thoughts is a fascinating way to spend time and to reveal truth. About Face, which chronicles the lives and careers of past supermodels from the ’50s-’90s by director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is one big talking head. And, for the most part, the heads aren’t that interesting but are smugly narcissistic. Christy Turlington, Isabella Rossellini (who wonders if plastic surgery is akin to foot binding) and Paulina Porizkova come off well. Best quote? “I didn’t do plastic surgery to look young, just well-rested.”

Grabbers was in my top ten to watch at Sundance, based solely upon its premise: “When an island off the coast of Ireland is invaded by bloodsucking aliens, the heroes discover that getting drunk is the only way to survive.” Sounds perfect for Park City After Midnight fare. But like a guy who is fun at two drinks and a bore at four Grabbers ceases to capitalize on the concept or the first half-hour setup. Once the town’s two police officers get the entire population into the only pub to get them all blindingly inebriated–with the bizarre position that they not telling anyone why they’re making them booze it up–the film loses its appeal.

A different kind of bloodsucker is featured in Gypsy Davy a confounding documentary by Rachel Leah Jones. Jones has the biggest daddy issues this side of stripper’s pole but she brandishes a camera instead, in a quest for the mythical father that abandoned her as a child. That father is Dave Serva (whose real last name is Jones), a Flamenco guitarist of some renown. Serva dropped women and his seed across two continents rarely providing emotional support and, seemingly, not being terribly bothered by it. The director, understandably, is bothered by it.

At first she spends time romanticizing Serva’s career and the place of Flamenco on the world stage of music. This tends to anger the viewer who would believe she’s still currying favor from this absent, exotic parent (all the more mysterious and attractive by his very act of being elsewhere). But then, as abandoned children and heartbroken women stack up it becomes clear that Leah Jones is calmly dissecting her father, with him damning himself with his own heartless, remorseless and shameless statements.

You find out that one of Serva’s kids, Martin Jones influenced Adam Duritz and the Counting Crows when he was with the band and that he’s the eponymous “Mr. Jones” of the hit song (something admitted by Duritz on stage in concert, run the first few lines of the song through your head, you’ll get it). Leah Jones discusses how Serva was a self-made man.

And it’s here, and the near the end of Gypsy Davy, that you maddeningly discover the director trying to give this wayward, deadbeat dad, an out, listing out a heartbreak of his own in his youth when Dave was “strumming his own pain.” It doesn’t wash nor does it make up for this joker pepper-spraying the world with his semen. He had so many children the odds were inevitable one of them would end up a filmmaker with daddy issues.

Ultimately, this film was likely an act of catharsis for Leah Jones. She is able to upbraid her father, expose his past sins and tell him she loves him and forgives him.

I got two things out of it: I’m putting Flamenco down in my “Acquired Taste” category for music and that sage, motherly advice is true: Don’t fall in love with a musician.

by Keith Simanton

Still from Compliance

Compliance has earned wildly mixed reviews here at Sundance, and I feel it’s successful for that reason alone, even though it’s a filthy piece of work.

The drama puts the employees of a fast food restaurant through an incredible scenario orchestrated by a prank caller. Posing as a police officer, he contacts the store manager and makes her an unwitting ally in a plot against a pretty cashier, whom he accuses of stealing money from a customer’s purse. The manager quarantines the young woman, and for the remaining duration of the film she is subjected to a series of dehumanizing acts illustrate how some bend to the will of others without true resistance.

I think writer-director Craig Zobel slips up by placing value judgments on his characters, especially in the film’s coda. And the lurid camerawork is as sleazy as the true events that inform Zobel’s work. This is especially questionable and perhaps short-sighted filmmaking from a guy who has worked with David Gordon Green from George Washington through Undertow.

Still from The Imposter

More successful is The Imposter, an immersive missing person documentary that reveals one person’s fraud and one family’s potential crime and cover up.

13-year-old Nicholas Barclay vanished from his San Antonio neighborhood in 1994. Some three years later, a young man in Spain materialized, claiming to be Nicholas. We’re introduced to this man, Frédéric Bourdin, at the beginning of The Imposter, and he guides us through how he duped authorities on both sides of the Atlantic and was accepted by the Barclay family as being Nicholas.

Keep in mind that Nicholas was a blonde haired, blue-eyed boy with a small frame at the time of his disappearance, and Frédéric, who was in his early 20s when he posed as the boy, was a Frenchman who bleached his dark hair the day he was reunited with his would-be sister and had three small tattoos inked on him according to Nicholas’ missing person report.

Wait, a tattooed 13-year-old boy?

That’s when I felt a greater sense of curiosity and suspicion about the Barclay family history, and director Bart Layton does a fantastic job at balancing Frédéric’s amoral deception with a sense of Nicholas’ true fate; he even lassos in a private eye who provides bits of welcome comic relief as he takes up the case against the Barclays.

A&E IndieFilms is behind the work, which plays like a superior TV documentary. That’s a polite way of saying I’m surprised this was programmed at a top-ranking film festival, but it is definitely worth seeing as Nicholas’ case remains open.

Still from How to Survive a Plague

In recent years, with the queer-rights movement trained on the issue of marriage equality, and as sectors of the HIV+ population have achieved and maintained undetectable status, the AIDS/ARC timeline has blurred for some of us. What first shook me back into consciousness in David France‘s documentary How to Survive a Plague was the footage from the first ACT UP event, which went down on Wall Street in March, 1987. Those wavy videotaped moments reminded me that the response to the AIDS epidemic was started by a few and embraced by many. This was a time when Mark Harrington and Peter Staley became community leaders and people who had never been politically involved, such as chemist Iris Long, emerged to help put together a plan of action for treatment.

By keeping the focus on the key players in the fight against AIDS in New York City, director France has created a historical document that resonates with today’s Occupy movement, and beautifully frames the period where a group of people educated themselves, fought against the status quo, and made inroads with the FDA, pharmaceutical companies, the National Institute for Health, the media, and the White House.

Plague benefits from the hours of archival footage, from the early community meetings through ACT UP’s split into two separate, sometimes combative organizations. What captivated me was this dissolution, where a few of ACT UP’s founding members created the Treatment Action Group in order to concentrate on research for AIDS treatments and co-infections, being labeled elitists by ACT UP in the process. Leave it to writer/activist Larry Kramer to find the true definition of the community’s collective anger by announcing that they were in the midst of a plague and their internal combustion must produce positive results.

Whether you are a survivor of that time period or a member of the generation that followed, How to Survive a Plague is a radical and inspiring document of a social movement that has not lost its power, influence and hope over the last 35 years.

Bingham Ray

Sundance continues under a pall in the wake of the news that indie film lion Bingham Ray passed away Monday. “It’s a big shock,” said Christian Gaines, senior manager for festivals for Withoutabox. “It’s hard to imagine the festival circuit without him. He’ll be sorely missed.”

I only knew Ray slightly, having exchanged festival pleasantries several times, which consist of “When you get in/get out?” and “What have you liked?” We had one long animated conversation about the commercial prospects of Teeth (Ray was really really right, I was really, really wrong). He always seemed a quick wit and a gracious soul. We at IMDb send our condolences to Bingham Ray’s friends and particularly his family for their loss.

Amidst the sorrow Sundance affords some wonderful insights and stories. Before the screening of Monsieur Lazhar, announced as a Best Foreign Language Film nominee this morning, director Phillipe Falardeau admitted that he’d had a nightmare the night before about our very screening. He said the screening had started and he was content but nervous. The projectionist seemed to have everything in hand. The house was full. But then, to his horror, he realized that the entire film was no longer in French but in English and no longer eligible to be in the Foreign Language category. He awoke from his nightmare to share a breakfast of Lucky Charms with his producers. Once the Foreign Language noms came in all they heard was “From Canada…” uttered and they then began yelling so loud that they never actually heard “Monsieur Lazhar” spoken.

Lazhar is a delicate film about a political refugee from Algeria who becomes a substitute teacher for a class whose former teacher had committed suicide in their classroom at the beginning of the year. It features outstanding performances by several children and a noble turn by Mohamed Fellag, as Lazhar.

Safety Not Guaranteed is a quirky but largely satisfying film about three editors in Seattle who follow the story of a man who has placed a classified ad stating “Wanted: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke…You’ll get paid after we get back. Bring your own weapons. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED. I have only done this once before.” Mark Duplass (who seems to be getting better with each performance) is the guy who submitted the ad and Aubrey Plaza plays the intern who investigates his claims.

Comedian Mike Birbiglia co-wrote, directs and stars in Sleepwalk With Me and, for those who’ve heard his stand-up routine over the years, a lot of the material will be familiar. It helps that it’s good material and that Birbiglia leaves sentimentality behind. Much like Howard Stern‘s Private Parts the story here is about the struggle to start in a tough profession and how revealing personal, private details turned a faltering career around.

by Keith Simanton

I credit Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim for helping make cable TV a destination for gonzo, unstable comedy. “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” served up 12-minute bits of peerless schtick that undoubtedly inspired plenty of amateurs who have since found immortality on Funny or Die or YouTube. So it’s a bummer to assert that their feature-length film, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, is a semi-baked story idea stretched into a painfully long run time where even their support staff (Zach Galifianakis, John C. Reilly, Will Ferrell) don’t deliver gold, or in this case, diamonds (you’ll see, but it’s not important). It’s the sort of bore where, if you were sitting next to me, I’d understand if you started to check your phone for texts, or even status updates.

The shambling plot follows Tim and Eric after they make a F-grade movie that cost a billion dollars loaned to them by the mobster-like Schlaaang Corportation. In order to pay back their debt, they skip town, refashion themselves as a public relations duo, and accept an open invite to renovate the Swallow Valley Mall, trading Robert Loggia‘s death threats for Will Ferrell’s winking promise of financial redemption in the process. As they ready the mall for a grand re-opening, squatters are evicted, ghosts are unmasked in the yogurt shop, Tim takes custody of the son of a vendor who specializes in selling used toilet paper, and Eric spends a night getting “Shrimed” in a bathtub, then discovers Tim passed out in the adult toy store with Katie, a balloon vendor and the object of Eric’s lust. (How dare you defile Miss Geist.)

Before the screening, I surveyed several film writers, and they all said the movie will satisfy fans, and the sudden appearances of Reilly or Galifianakis make up for the draggy bits, though I disagree with both claims. Suspiciously absent or tuned down are many of T&E’s trademarks — the faux commercials, cable-access style graphics, special effects, and looping edits that helped solidify their small but devoted following. The most disengaging part of the movie is the ending, which proves that surrealist comedy writers still fall prey to typical three act structure and its typical failures. Conversely, the funniest moment is at the very beginning, where a barrage of Schlaaang vanity cards introduce the feature.

When you soften the edges of a cult TV program in order to appeal to a wider audience, purists will grumble. I’ll be interested to see what the reaction to the movie is once it’s on VOD and in theaters. Obviously there’s a huge difference between being a fan who sees this for free and one who shells out for a viewing, be it at home or otherwise. If I had paid to see this film, it would have overwritten the last major TV-to-movie letdown, Strangers with Candy: The Movie.

Here’s the overview of Sundance scuttlebutt:

Hunt and Hawkes in The Surrogate

Good:

• The Surrogate: Incredibly open and revealing performances by John Hawkes and Helen Hunt (welcome back!) in a remarkable and unique film about journalist and poet Mark O’Brien. O’Brien was stricken by polio as a child and spent most of his life in an iron lung, unable to move most of his muscles save his neck and mouth. Despite this he attended Berkeley and lived on his own. This film focuses on the sexual surrogate he employed to allow him to enjoy one of the most basic, enjoyable aspects of life; sex. Fox Searchlight just bought the film for $6M so it will, thankfully, be coming to a theater near you
• Liberal Arts: So, I really like Josh Radnor‘s style. He made the woefully under-valued Happythankyoumoreplease and crafts yet another extremely smart and self-deprecating film. Artswisely sends up the standard Sundance offering where some depressed hipster bastard entrances hot, nubile co-ed for no apparent reason other than the fact that the script calls for it. Here you actually get it. Happy. Thank you. More please.
• The Raid: Gareth Evans‘s Indonesian melee film that is a bloody blast to watch
• The Invisible War: Kirby Dick‘s even-handed take on rape in the U.S. Armed Forces
• Your Sister’s Sister: Emily Blunt, Mark Duplass and Rosemarie DeWitt in an audience favorite
• Celeste and Jesse Forever: One must love Rashida Jones, even in this uneven flick (which she co-wrote as well)
• West of Memphis (haven’t heard a bad word about this Amy Berg documentary, the fourth about the West Memphis 3 from the Paradise Lost docs.)

Mixed:

• Oslo, August 31st: a paced character study but director Joachim Trier has an accomplished approach
• Where Do We Go Now?: The winner of the Audience Award at Toronto is a jumbled bag of music and politics from star/director Nadine Labaki, but please keep making pictures
• Lay the Favorite: I’ve got a major crush on Rebecca Hall, exuberant in her character, but a weird coda leaves a bad taste in my mouth (and I heart director Stephen Frears)
• The Words: Wanting to like this well-intended film, with an impassioned performance by Bradley Cooper, can’t change my reaction to a meandering, even creepy, framing device with Dennis Quaid and Olivia Wilde
• The First Time: Britt Robertson, as a girl ready to lose her virginity, is captivating but much of this film feels like a college screenwriting final about high school.

Pass:

• Filly Brown: Little too after-school special for me (and many tittering others) but a great performance by the lead Gina Rodriguez
• Red Hook Summer: I can’t write about Spike Lee‘s latest film because I’m pretty sure I didn’t see it. Whatever junior high production I accidentally walked into and, after a listless hour, walked out of, however, I can write about. I met people who stuck it out. They envied me.

by Keith Simanton

Here’s the overview of Sundance scuttlebutt:

Still from The Raid

Good:

• The Raid: Gareth Evans‘s Indonesian melee film that is a bloody blast to watch
• The Invisible War: Kirby Dick‘s even-handed take on rape in the U.S. Armed Forces
• Your Sister’s Sister: Emily Blunt, Mark Duplass and Rosemarie DeWitt in an audience favorite
• Celeste and Jesse Forever: positive reaction to Rashida Jones flick (which she co-wrote as well)
• West of Memphis (haven’t heard a bad word about this Amy Berg documentary, the fourth about the West Memphis 3 from the Paradise Lost docs.)

Mixed:

• Oslo, August 31st: a paced character study but director Joachim Trier has an accomplished approach
• Where Do We Go Now?: The winner of the Audience Award at Toronto is a jumbled bag of music and politics from star/director Nadine Labaki, but please keep making pictures
• Lay the Favorite: I’ve got a major crush on Rebecca Hall, exuberant in her character, but a weird coda leaves a bad taste in my mouth (and I heart director Stephen Frears)
• The Words: Wanting to like this well-intended film, with an impassioned performance by Bradley Cooper, can’t change my reaction to a meandering, even creepy, framing device with Dennis Quaid and Olivia Wilde

Pass:

• Filly Brown: Little too after-school special for me (and many tittering others) but a great performance by the lead Gina Rodriguez

by Keith Simanton

The most exciting rumor I’ve heard is of the re-invigorated Jesse Owens biopic. Owens was a spectacular all-around athlete whose presence at Hitler’s Olympic games in Berlin in 1936 infuriated the Fuehrer. Blacks were thought by the Nazis to be an inferior race but Owens bested Hitler’s Aryan “supermen,” winning four gold medals in a single Olympiad, a feat not equaled until Carl Lewis did it in Los Angeles in 1984. Wags place a favorite actor of ours, Anthony Mackie, playing Owens though this project has been off-again, on-again for a few years now. The concept alone fairly reeks of Oscars.

Kirby Dick has another compelling documentary here called The Invisible War. It chronicles the horrifying statistics of the incidence of rape in the U.S. military, of both men and women, and the complete lack of resource, of recompense, and of justice for those who are the victims of the crime. While Dick can be accused of not being the most subtle filmmaker, here he is at his best, with a subject that would enrage any person who watches it. Dick also provides a coda showing how people can get involved in righting some of the crazed military procedures that endanger men and women in and outside of the Armed Forces at http://invisiblewarmovie.com/.

Gareth Evans‘s The Raid was a much-talked about film when it was in Toronto’s Midnight Madness series last fall. Ultra-violent and ultra-gory, it showcases a police unit who raid a crime baron’s tenement building and then, when the boss turns the tables on them, must fight to get out alive. It well deserves its fan-boy accolades with action choreography that often surprises and avoids the usual trap of going on interminably. Iko Uwais, who plays the main cop, is pretty amazing.

Lastly, we at IMDb wish Bingham Ray, a lion of indie cinema and one of the founders of October Films, a speedy recovery after suffering a stroke at Sundance. He is reportedly in a Provo hospital and recuperating.

Director Lynn Shelton had an awful time getting out of snowed-in Seattle but it was worth it. Your Sister’s Sister, a smart, funny film with three great performances by Emily Blunt, Mark Duplass (a Sundance fixture and favorite) and Rosemarie DeWitt received a standing ovation at its Library screening (the Library is an old Park City school/library where some of my favorite screenings have taken place). Shelton had to call in for her Q&A but it was better, many said, than other in-person post-film interviews that had already taken place. Your Sister’s Sister was an audience favorite in Toronto and now repeats it in Sundance. Marketing this film correctly, however, will be critical to bring in a wider audience. Shelton made it into Park City in time to attend her own party which also housed Anthony Mackie, Bryan Cranston and Ron Livingston (he’s married to DeWitt, in case you didn’t know).

Enthusiastic nods are coming back from questions about the worth of Hello I Must Be Going, the film from director Todd Louiso (he did the dour, but memorable Love, Liza with Philip Seymour Hoffman). Hello stars Melanie Lynskey.

Also of note: An Amarcord-like film from Nadine Labaki, Where Do We Go Now? proves that this Lebanese director (who made the well-received Caramel) can move from comedy to tragedy, from seduction to rage, with ease and grace and that Caramel was no fluke.

by Keith Simanton

After igniting the fire under potential Oscar nominees (Margin Call, Buck), serving as the debutante ball for Elizabeth Olsen, and exhibiting two of the worst-performing movies of the year relative to their marquee values (I Melt with You and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold), Sundance returns with a roster that tempts me to look for trends and themes as the independent film community gathers for its winter formal.

The main thing I see before really seeing anything? From bridesmaids to political matriarchs, female-powered films are in focus, with a number of women directors present this year. Here’s a sampling:

Bachelorette: Kirsten Dunst and two girlfriends accept the request to be bridesmaids for a woman they used to haze back in high school. I’m happy to see someone remembered that Kirsten D. is a great comedienne when she has the right material, and I’m looking forward to her revisiting her mean-girl past alongside Isla Fisher and Lizzy Caplan. Writer-director Leslye Headland (from the why-did-you-cancel-this-FX show “Terriers”) here is backed by Will Ferrell and a team of savvy producers, so this project is primed for a potential big sale if it’s actual-real funny.

Ethel: Last year, HBO Documentary Films bravely unveiled Reagan; this year, the network exhibits a portrait of Ethel Kennedy that’s directed by her daughter, Rory. Unlike the Reagan documentary, look for this particular Kennedy to remain in the news after the festival.

Two assumedly broke girls start a phone-sex business in For a Good Time, Call…. Ari Graynor is one of the operators, and the actress has Olsen Potential this year with this comedy and a supporting role in Celeste and Jesse Forever, which I’m referring to as Rashida Jones‘s Albert Nobbs since she wrote and stars in her passion project.

About Face: Jerry Hall, Carmen Dell’Orefice, and other world-class supermodels discuss their careers and the aging process. And you can bet they won’t forget to smile with their eyes. I could watch a fashion documentary with each new day, and it’s about time someone revisited the legends.

Speaking (again) of Elizabeth Olsen, she brings a new pair of films to Sundance 2012: she co-stars in Liberal Arts, Josh Radnor‘s return to the festival, and Red Lights alongside Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver. I’m looking forward to both, but more for their respective directors. Radnor, who made gentle waves with Happythankyoumoreplease, earned my interest as he refused to hand over a final print to its initial distributor and found a bit of success elsewhere; Red Lights is the new project from Buried‘s Rodrigo Cortés, and while perhaps the best thing about Buried was its poster, I like gimmicky thrillers, especially as a festival palette cleanser given all the films that remind me of how horrible the world can be.

Kid-Thing: My eye is on this one due to reports of young star Sidney Aguirre‘s naturalistic performance as a tomboy who encounters a woman in a dire circumstance. It screens in the festival’s NEXT program, always a mixed bag.

Nadezhda Markina stars as the titular Elena, a family drama and Cannes winner from Andrei Zvyagintsev, director of one of my all-time favorites, The Return. Zvyagintsev has earned lazy and annoying comparisons to Andrei Tarkovsky, though he possesses a voice all his own, and reportedly his new project slowly nods toward the noir genre of old.

The number of female directors at this year’s festival could earn its own post, but hopefully some of these films will emerge for their individual merit instead. At the top of the heap, in name only, is Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold‘s follow up to Fish Tank. Julie Delpy‘s 2 Days in New York catches up with her character (from 2 Days in Paris) after she has ditched Adam Goldberg and finds her living in Manhattan with two children and boyfriend Chris Rock. Jennifer Baichwal, whose Manufactured Landscapes was excellent, has adapted writer Margaret Atwood‘s analysis of indebtedness in Payback. That’s What She Said has a gritty NYC look and what could be a(nother) bonkers performance from Anne Heche. Katie Aselton helms and co-stars in Black Rock, a thriller screening in the Park City at Night program that literally has the Duplass seal of approval. Gypsy Davy and Putin’s Kiss are potential winners, too.

And the two films screening as this year’s Sundance Collection? Daughters of the Dust. And Reality Bites. Wino Forever!

You usually have to wait for Cannes to deliver the year’s requisite dollops of festival drama and shocking developments but Sundance has already, albeit reluctantly, stepped into that role for 2012.

It’s already generated a lawsuit, for one. Plaintiff David Siegel, a Florida real estate developer and one of subjects of The Queen of Versailles, took issue with the festival’s press release describing the documentary as a “rags to riches to rags” tale and is suing Sundance, executive producer Frank Evers and producer/director Lauren Greenfield for defamation. Siegel dislikes the last “to rags” inclusion in the synopsis as well as the statement that the 90,000 square foot home went into foreclosure.

Sundance has removed the “to rags” bit and the foreclosure mention but Siegel is claiming that the offending  press release phrases are now so prevalent, due to the Internet, that the damage is done.

More controversy swirls around the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei and the documentary film about him, Never Sorry by Alison Klayman. Ai Weiwei designed China’s famous Olympic stadium, dubbed “The Bird’s Nest,” but he’s equally known as an artist, activist, protestor and provocateur, the last two particularly by his own government. In May the Smithsonian will be featuring him in an exhibit entitled “Ai Weiwei: According to What?”  The artist claims he was arrested in April of last year and held for three months, until his supporters raised over $1.3m in bail money to have him released. Weiwei was also slapped with $2.1m in taxes in November and, under the statutes of his bail, is unable to leave the country until June of this year.

by Keith Simanton

Egyptian Theater, Park City, Utah

The Sundance Film Festival 2012 announced both their host for this year’s awards ceremony – the fantastic Ms. Parker Posey – and the jury members who will judge each of the festival’s categories.

Read the full press release received from Sundance this morning below:

Parker Posey to Host 2012 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony

JURY MEMBERS ANNOUNCED

Shari Berman, Scott Burns, Charles Ferguson, Nick Fraser, Mike Judge, Justin Lin,
Anthony Mackie, Cliff Martinez, Julia Ormond, Dee Rees and Lynn Shelton Among Jurors

Park City, UT – Sundance Institute announced today the 22 members of the six juries awarding prizes at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, as well as the host of the Awards Ceremony on January 28. The Festival takes place January 19 through 29 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

Actress and writer Parker Posey will serve as the host of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony, set to take place January 28 at 7:00 p.m. MT at the Basin Recreation Field House in Park City, Utah and live-streamed at www.sundance.org/festival. Named “Queen of the Indies” by TIME Magazine, Posey has appeared in more than a dozen films at the Sundance Film Festival, including Party Girl (1995), House of Yes (1997) and Broken English (2007). Posey also appears in Price Check in the out-of-competition Premieres section at this year’s Festival.

Awards for short films will also be announced at a separate ceremony on January 24 at Park City’s Jupiter Bowl.

Photos and extended biographies of the jurors and Awards Ceremony host, in addition to the complete Festival lineup and schedule, are available at www.sundance.org/festival.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY JURY

Fenton Bailey

Fenton Bailey made his Sundance Film Festival debut in 1998 with the documentary Party Monster. He later co-wrote and co-directed a narrative version of Party Monster, which debuted at Sundance in 2003. Fenton has gone on to produce and/or direct seven films launched at the festival, including Inside Deep Throat and, most recently, the Emmy®-nominated documentary Becoming Chaz. In 2010 he produced the Emmy®-winning documentary The Last Beekeeper, and in 2011 he produced and directed the Emmy®- nominated Wishful Drinking.

Shari Berman

Shari Springer Berman is an Oscar- and Emmy®-nominated filmmaker. With partner Robert Pulcini, she wrote and directed American Splendor (Grand Jury Prize, 2003 Sundance Film Festival; FIPRESCI Award, Cannes Film Festival; Best Adapted Screenplay, Writers Guild Awards and Best Adapted Screenplay Nomination, Academy Awards®). Cinema Verite, Berman and Pulcini’s most recent film,

received nine Emmy® nominations including Best Movie, Outstanding Directing and a win for Best Editing. Their first film, Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s, won Best Documentary Feature at the 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival.

Heather Croall

Heather Croall is the Director for Sheffield Doc/Fest, the premiere documentary event in the UK and regarded as one of the best documentary events in the world. Heather was previously the director of the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC), where she developed the innovative matchmaking pitching initiative MeetMarket.

Charles Ferguson

Charles Ferguson directed and produced Inside Job, which won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature in 2011. His first documentary, No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize. The film went on to be nominated for the Oscar in 2008. Charles is the author of four books, including High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars and Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World (co-authored with Charles Morris). He is currently working on a book about the global financial crisis, to be released by Random House in Spring 2012. Charles is the founder and president of Representational Pictures, Inc.

Kim Roberts

Kim Roberts is an editor of feature documentaries. Her recent work includes Waiting for Superman, Food, Inc., Autism the Musical, and the upcoming Last Call at the Oasis. Kim won an Emmy® for Autism the Musical, her third nomination. She has received two Eddie Award nominations from the American Cinema Editors, and a WGA nomination. Her other films include: Oscar Nominees and Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winners Daughter from Danang and Long Night’s Journey into Day, Two Days in October, The Fall of Fujimori, Lost Boys of Sudan, Daddy & Papa, A Hard Straight and Splinters.

U.S. DRAMATIC JURY

Justin Lin

Justin Lin’s solo directorial debut, the critically acclaimed Better Luck Tomorrow, premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and garnered a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize. In April 2003, the film went on to make box office history as the highest-grossing (per-screen average) opening weekend film for MTV Films/Paramount Pictures. In 2009, he directed Universal’s Fast & Furious, which reunited the original cast of the franchise and sparked new life for series. Justin then directed the critically-acclaimed fifth installment of the franchise, Fast Five, which has become one of Universal’s most financially successful movies of all time.

Anthony Mackie

Anthony Mackie is a classically trained actor who studied at the Julliard School of Drama. His work spans the stage and screen. He was discovered after receiving rave reviews while playing Tupac Shakur in the off-Broadway Up Against the Wind. He earned IFP Spirit and Gotham Award nominations for his performance in Rodney Evan’s Brother to Brother, which won the Special Dramatic Jury Price at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, as well as best feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. He also played Sgt. JT Sanborn in Kathryn’s Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, a film that not only earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination, but also earned Academy Awards® for the Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing and Best Writing.

Cliff Martinez

Cliff Martinez began as a drummer for several bands during the punk era including the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Dickies. He later scored Steven Soderbergh’s first theatrical release, 1989′s sex, lies, and videotape, leading to a longstanding relationship which includes Kafka, The Limey, Traffic, Solaris and Contagion. His credits also include Narc, The Lincoln Lawyer and Nicolas Refn’s Drive.

Lynn Shelton

Lynn Shelton was a stage actor until attending graduate school in photography at the School of Visual Arts, at which point she became an editor and experimental filmmaker. Her first narrative feature as a writer/director, We Go Way Back, won the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance in 2006. Her second, My Effortless Beauty, premiered at SXSW and earned her the Acura Someone to Watch Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Humpday, her third feature, was awarded a Special Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival as well as the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Your Sister’s Sister premiered at the 2011 Toronto Film Festival and is playing in the out-of-competition Spotlight section at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Amy Vincent

Amy Vincent is an award-winning cinematographer. She has worked with Kasi Lemmons on Eve’s Bayou, Dr. Hugo, Caveman’s Valentine and with Craig Brewer on Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan, and the recently released Footloose. In addition, Amy’s work has garnered prestigious awards, including the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Cinematography Award for Hustle & Flow and the 2001 Women in Film Kodak Vision Award.

WORLD DOCUMENTARY JURY

Nick Fraser

Nick Fraser has served as the Editor of Storyville since it started in 1997. After graduating from Oxford he worked as a reporter, television producer and editor. His publications include a biography of Eva Peron, The Voice of Modern Hatred, and The Importance of Being Eton. Storyville films have won more than 200 awards, including four Oscars, a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and several Griersons, Emmys® and Peabodys.

Clara Kim

Clara Kim is Senior Curator of Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center. She was formerly Gallery Director & Curator at REDCAT in Los Angeles where she organized residencies, commissions, exhibitions and publications with international contemporary artists. She was co-curator of the international biennial Media City Seoul 2010 and organized a global forum on independent spaces called State of Independence in 2011. She has sat on juries for Creative Capital Foundation, Artadia Artist Fellowship, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Award; is on the advisory board of East of Borneo; and is the recipient of fellowships from the Warhol Foundation and the Asian Cultural Council.

Jean-Marie Teno

Jean-Marie Teno has been producing and directing films on the colonial and post-colonial history of Africa for over 25 years. His films are noted for their personal and original approach to issues of race, cultural identity, African history and contemporary politics. Teno’s films have been honored at festivals worldwide: Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, Yamagata, Paris, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Liepzig, San Francisco, and London. Teno has been a guest of the Flaherty Seminar, an artist in residence at the Pacific Film Archive of the University of California, Berkeley, a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College, and has lectured at numerous universities. He was a Visiting professor at Hampshire College in 2009.

WORLD DRAMATIC JURY

Julia Ormond

British actress Julia Ormond received the London Drama Critics’ Award for Best Newcomer in Christopher Hampton’s Faith, Hope and Charity. She starred in the epic Legends of the Fall, played the lead role with Harrison Ford in the film Sabrina, and starred in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In 2010 she won a supporting actress Emmy® Award for her role in the HBO Movie Temple Grandin. She is the Founder and President of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET), which works with corporations, NGOs, government officials, and individuals to create the systemic change needed to eradicate slavery at source. Julia is a former United Nations Goodwill Ambassador against Trafficking and Slavery, and the founding co-chair of Film Aid International. She can currently be seen in the Weinstein Company’s My Week with Marilyn in which she plays actress Vivien Leigh.

Richard Pena

Richard Peña has been the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. At the Film Society, Peña has organized retrospectives of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Aldrich, Roberto Gavaldon, Ritwik Ghatak, Kira Muratova, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Carlos Saura and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Swedish, Israeli, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Taiwanese and Argentine cinema. He is a Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema, and from 2006-2009 was a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. He is also currently the co-host of WNET/Channel 13′s weekly Reel 13.

Alexei Popogrebsky

Alexei Popogrebsky was born in 1972 in Moscow into a family of a screenwriter. He wrote and directed the award-winning films Roads to Koktebel (2003) (with Boris Khlebnikov), Simple Things (2007), and How I Ended This Summer (2010), set and shot on a polar station in the Russian Arctic and based entirely around two characters. The film won two Silver Bears in Berlin, Gold Hugo in Chicago and Best Film at BFI London Film Festival. Alexei is currently developing his first English-language project, a 3D fantasy drama.

ALFRED P. SLOAN JURY

Scott Burns

Scott Burns recently wrote the screenplay for the Warner Bros. film, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The film, starring Bradley Cooper and currently in development, is set to begin production in early 2012 and marks Burns’ fourth collaboration with Steven Soderbergh, who will direct. He also wrote Contagion and co- wrote the Academy Award®-winning Bourne Ultimatum, starring Matt Damon and directed by Paul Greengrass. As a producer, he received the Humanitas Prize and the Stanley Kramer Award from the Producers Guild of America for his Academy Award®-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He wrote and directed HBO Films’ critically acclaimed PU-239, which was produced by Soderbergh and George Clooney. Scott also wrote The Library, a stage play based on the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School with Kennedy/Marshall producing. He began his career in advertising and was part of the creative team responsible for the original “Got Milk?” campaign.

Tracy Day

Tracy Day co-founded the World Science Festival in 2008 with world-renowned physicist and best-selling author Brian Greene. She serves as CEO and oversees the creative and programmatic offerings of the World Science Festival. She is a four-time National News Emmy® award-winning journalist and has produced live and documentary programming for the nation’s preeminent television news divisions for over two decades. At ABC News she was producer for This Week with David Brinkley, editorial and field producer for Nightline and story editor for the news magazine, Day One. Tracy has produced documentaries, specials and live town meeting broadcasts for PBS, The Discovery Channel, CNN, Lifetime and CNBC. In addition to Emmy® Awards, she won a Hugo Award, a 2004 Clarion Award and the CINE Golden Eagle for investigative journalism. She has been an adjunct professor in the Leadership and the Arts program at the Sanford Institute for Public Policy.

Helen Fisher

Helen Fisher, PhD, is a biological Anthropologist at Rutgers University. She studies the evolution, brain systems (fMRI) and cross-cultural patterns of romantic love, mate choice, marriage, adultery, divorce, gender differences in the brain, personality, temperament, and business personalities. She has written five internationally best selling books, including WHY HIM? WHY HER?; WHY WE LOVE; and ANATOMY OF LOVE. She lectures worldwide. Among her speeches are those at the World Economic Forum at Davos, TED, United Nations, Smithsonian, Salk Institute, Harvard Medical School and Aspen Institute.

She publishes widely in academic and lay journals. For her work in the media, Helen received the American Anthropological Association’s Distinguished Service Award.

SHORT FILM JURY

Mike Judge

Mike Judge is the creator of Beavis and Butt-Head for MTV and King of the Hill for FOX TV. He expanded into writing and directing his own live-action films, Office Space, Idiocracy and Extract. He’s done voices for South Park and acted in Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids movies. Mike recently resurrected Beavis and Butt-Head with 12 new shows for MTV.

Dee Rees

Dee Rees is an alumna of New York University’s graduate film program and a Sundance Institute Directing Lab Fellow. She’s written and directed several short films including the award-winning Pariah, which screened at over 40 festivals worldwide. Her feature documentary, Eventual Salvation, premiered on the Sundance Channel in 2009, and her debut narrative feature, Pariah, opened the U.S. Dramatic competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Dee received a Renew Media Arts Fellowship for her work, and recently completed an endowed residency at Yaddo. Currently, Dee is writing an original screenplay for Focus Features and is also in development on a new television series with HBO. Dee interned on Spike Lee’s films When The Levees Broke and Inside Man.

Shane Smith

Shane Smith has been a programmer, jury member and speaker at film festivals all over the world. He is currently the Director of Public Programmes at TIFF Bell Lightbox. He previously served as the Executive Producer, In-flight Entertainment at Spafax Canada Inc., where he oversaw all in-flight programming for Air Canada. He also was the Director of Programming for the digital TV channels Movieola: The Short Film Channel and Silver Screen Classics. He was a Short Film Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival from 2006-2010 and for six years was the Director of the Canadian Film Centre’s Worldwide Short Film Festival. He is a former Programmer for the Inside Out Festival, a member of the Organizing Committee of the International Short Film Conference and was formerly on the Board of Directors of the Centre for Aboriginal Media, presenters of the imagineNATIVE Film Festival.

The Sundance Film Festival

A program of the non-profit Sundance Institute, the Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most ground-breaking films of the past two decades, including sex, lies, and videotape, Maria Full of Grace, The Cove, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious, Trouble the Water, and Napoleon Dynamite, and through its New Frontier initiative, has showcased the cinematic works of media artists including Isaac Julien, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Matthew Barney. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival sponsors include: Presenting Sponsors – Entertainment Weekly, HP, Acura, Sundance Channel and Chase SapphireSM; Leadership Sponsors – Adobe Systems Incorporated, BingTM, Canon, DIRECTV, Focus Forward, a partnership between GE and CINELAN, Southwest Airlines, Sprint and Yahoo!; Sustaining Sponsors – Bertolli® Frozen Meal Soups, FilterForGood®, a partnership between Brita® and Nalgene®, Grey Goose® Vodka, Hilton HHonors and Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, L’Oréal Paris, Stella Artois®, Timberland, Time Warner Inc. and YouTubeTM. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations will defray costs associated with the 10- day Festival and the nonprofit Sundance Institute’s year-round programs for independent film and theatre artists. www.sundance.org/festival

Sundance Institute

Sundance Institute is a global nonprofit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981. Through its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, composers and playwrights, the Institute seeks to discover and support independent film and theatre artists from the United States and around the world, and to introduce audiences to their new work. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to inform, inspire, and unite diverse populations around the globe. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Son of Babylon, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, I Am My Own Wife, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Kudos to the creative team at Sundance this year. They crafted a poster that is a compilation of representative images from past Sundance films and Sundance tropes. We recognized numerous films from past festivals but would like to hear your comments as well.

Congratulations to the Winners at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival

Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Like Crazy

Grand Jury Prize: Documentary – How to Die in Oregon

Directing Award: Dramatic – Martha Marcy May Marlene

Directing Award: U.S. Documentary – Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award – Another Happy Day

Special Jury Prize: U.S. Dramatic – Felicity Jones for Like Crazy

Sundance’s Special Jury Prize #2: U.S. Dramatic – Another Earth

Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S Dramatic – Pariah

Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic – Circumstance

Special Jury Prize: U.S. Documentary – Being Elmo

Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary – The Redemption of General Butt Naked

Excellence in Editing Award: U.S Documentary – If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

Audience Award: U.S. Documentary – Buck

World Cinema Cinematography Award: Documentary – Hell and Back Again

World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary – Hell and Back Again

World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary – Project Nim

World Cinema Excellence in Editing Award: Documentary – The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary – Position Among the Stars

World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Happy, Happy

World Cinema Directing Award: Dramatic – Tyrannosaur

World Cinema Screenwriting Award: Dramatic – Restoration

World Cinema Cinematography Award: Dramatic – All Your Dead Ones

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Dramatic – Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman for Tyrannosaur

World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary – Senna

World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic – Kinyarwanda

Best of Next Audience Award: to.get.her

Alfred P. Sloan Award – Another Earth

One of the best films on the 2011 Sundance roster is winding down its festival run and gearing up for the Best Foreign Language Oscar competition. Incendies, Denis Villeneuve‘s drama (adapted from Wajdi Mouawad’s play) brings a young woman’s past hell into the present day, while a sister and brother are compelled to learn their recently deceased mother’s personal history.

As twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Mélissa Désormeaux Poulin and Maxim Gaudette) learn the specifics of the will prepared by their mother, Nawal (Lubna Azabal), they are handed two envelopes by Lebel (Rémy Girard), a notary, family friend, and Nawal’s long-time employer. One envelope is for the father they presumed to be dead, the other is to be handed to the brother they didn’t know existed. Once delivered, Nawal can have a proper burial; until then, she is to be interred naked, face down, away from the sun. Jeanne drafts herself into the mystery, soon landing in an unnamed Middle Eastern country — though the play is inspired by a woman’s experiences during the Lebanese Civil War.

From here, the story is broken into chapters and Nawal’s past alternates with her daughter’s series of discoveries at her mother’s village (from which Nawal was banished by her grandmother for disgracing the family name) and at the university where she began to involve herself in the war. Jeanne learns that Nawal’s activism intensified; she became a French tutor in a political leader’s house, then assassinated him in his backyard. She was sent to a notorious prison where her ability to endure physical and psychological torment became one of the war’s best-known legends.

Lubna Azabal as Nawal Marwan

As Nawal’s history is being re-threaded, both Simon and Lebel travel to be with Jeanne. It’s the brother’s turn to puzzle together the true family history. One day he’s sulking at home in Canada; the next, he’s hoping for an audience with a warlord – the man who hands him the final piece. It’s a devastating revelation for the children and for Lebel. It connects to the present, where Nawal fell into a catatonic state while at a public pool with her children. Soon she was gone, the will was read, Jeanne was on a plane, et cetera. Jeanne and Simon’s existence is tied to incredible examples of fate and valor.

Incendies is not as easy sit because of its realistic depiction of violence in war and against women. The indecencies committed against Nawal are formidable. Children are not just caught in the crossfire; they’re targeted for death. There’s a scene aboard a bus that is quite difficult to endure. While Nawal is imprisoned, mostly the sounds of torture and mental deterioration are heard, and it’s plenty brutal. Then perhaps Villeneuve’s most welcome skill as a filmmaker is the fact that his work is remarkably entertaining; there is a girl-detective sensibility in Jeanne’s passages and dark comedy bits salted throughout. It’s a demonstration of assuredness that I haven’t seen in many war films, and I do love the genre unequivocally.

I’ve seen a handful of films at Sundance this year that are indelicate and thematically over-worked; Incendies is a gracious nod to Wajdi Mouawad and the woman who inspired his play. It is a fine example of filmmaking on a global scale, a story that looks at a region’s horror and finds human perseverance.

Becoming Chaz: I sense that Chaz Bono has been a cool guy all of his life; he just needed to survive his spotlighted childhood and then, like everyone else, figure out who he is and work from there to be a happy person. Yes, Chaz was born female, but he acknowledges, in the solid documentary that bares his name, that he felt alien in his body since he was little. As an adult transitioning from one gender to another, Chaz lets cameras into his home, and they also follow him to the various clinics, hospitals, and agencies that aid in his process. I feel as though Chaz enabled the documentary not to further his fame, but to create a document that might help people who feel they too were born in the wrong body — a specialized companion piece to the It Gets Better project, if you will. Grounded, humble, and kind of a dink when shot up with testosterone, Chaz undergoes top surgery (breast removal) and begins to acclimate to his new life as a boyfriend to his steadfast companion (he loves her because she is a bit crazy) and mentor to gender-questioning youth. And by youth I mean: under 10 years old. This is perhaps the doc’s most eye-opening aspect – the fact that there are now places that help families with young children struggling with their gender identity. I feel like on-camera Chaz was happiest when he was in the role of friend and mentor to these kids, and I hope it’s one of many things that helps him find peace.

Take Shelter: Michael Shannon — prophet or schizophrenic? Director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) angles toward the former idea in his reunion with Shannon for a story centered on blue-collar family man Curtis LaForche, whose increasingly unnerving visions might not be as delusional as everyone — including Curtis himself — thinks.

Like a typical real-world family, the LaForches must contend with acute financial stresses, but Curtis’ work is steady and caring wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) pitches in by working local craft bazaars. Curtis’ insurance is generous, too — so much so that a cochlear implant implant surgery for their deaf daughter will be covered. There’s even a beach vacation on the proverbial horizon, but what Curtis begins to see from his backyard are storm clouds, tornadoes, and oil falling from the sky. Elsewhere, his visions find his daughter abducted, and his wife, his best friend — even his dog — turning against him. The narrative expands to reveal a history of schizophrenia in Curtis’ family and, in a welcome bit of characterization, he works to understand and take control of his situation. But why is it that the therapy and medication don’t seem to rid him of these nightmares?

You can sense the coming dramas. Problems at home lead to his feeling increasingly isolated. Underperforming at work threatens the security of the entire family, as well as hope for his daughter’s surgery. While Curtis slips deeper into a state that might require institutionalization, he takes out a risky loan on their home to build out the tornado shelter in the backyard. He borrows equipment from work for the project — a huge liability and no-no that … you can guess what happens to him next. And it keeps coming until Curtis is broken, suffering, and spending most of his time in his subterranean refuge.

Shannon imbues his character many shifts in mood, and fans of his will appreciate the inevitable Shannon Freakout Moment. Nichols’s aesthetic (aided by visual effects from the Strause Brothers) is on par with better known directors, but for me his screenplay tackles too many issues with a capital I. Though I admire him for making a drama with science fiction elements, I was just getting interested in the fate of the family when the film came to an end. Now I can’t rid my head of the vision of a clairvoyant Michael Shannon leading his family to safety in the wake of a supernatural disaster. I’m still thinking about Take Shelter, but mostly as a preamble to a potentially better film.

All Your Dead Ones: Just shy of 90 minutes in length, Carlos Moreno’s allegory of Colombia’s ongoing civil war is murderously paced but quite handsomely photographed. The story opens and closes with scenes of farmer Salvador (Alvaro Rodriguez), his wife (Martha Marquez), and their morning-sex ritual. In between, there’s a tense mystery involving Salvador’s discovery of a pile of dead bodies arranged in the middle of his cornfield. Initially unable to get anyone take interest (it’s election day, and Salvador is somewhat of a second-class citizen) he brings a town official and two soldiers to the scene, where a lax investigation begins. Salvador’s wife and son are implicated and made to stand and wait within arm’s reach of the bodies while the politico tries to figure out whom he can blame for the crime and what to do with the corpses. The sun burns down, everyone grows agitated, and the dead seem to flicker back to life now and then.

The family fears for their lives, but I didn’t get the sense the story would take that turn; it suggests the event is more of an annoying problem than a tragic occurrence. When Salvador’s wife recognizes one of the bodies as a local guy, she thinks that his body should be returned to his mother. Here, she’s more principled than emotional, and I think that’s the point of the film: even in a desensitized society, one should know basic rights from wrongs. And when you’ve seen so many disappear or die, your emotional side hardens.

The film’s final scene is harsh but predictable, though the violence is always implied and never shown (in particular, the pile of bodies is spotless). Bizarrely, the entire cast (yes, including the corpses) and crew assemble for a collective bow — one of the most whatever endings in recent memory.