PARK CITY, Utah — As the 2022 Sundance Film Festival winds down, the winners of the festival's jury and audience awards were announced Friday night.
84 feature films and 59 shorts, out of nearly 15,000 submissions, were shown over the course of nine days via the festival's online service after the festival canceled all of it's in person events due to the ongoing pandemic.
"The 2022 Sundance Film Festival once again met our audience wherever they happened to be,” said Sundance Film Festival Director Tabitha Jackson in a statement sent to the media. "Whether you watched from home or one of our seven satellite screens, this year’s Festival expressed a powerful convergence; we were present, together, as a community connected through the work. And it is work that has already changed those who experienced it.”
26 jury prizes and 6 audience prizes were awarded to the winning films, which will be screened on the Festival's online platform Saturday, January 29, and Sunday, January 30.
As the names imply, jury prizes are awarded to films by a jury of industry professionals, whereas the audience prize winners are determined by audience votes.
Here is the list of the winning films, with film descriptions provided by the Sundance Film Festival.
Grand Jury Prize Winners
DRAMATIC (U.S.): "Nanny" by Nikyatu Jusu
Aisha is an undocumented nanny working for a privileged couple in New York City. As she prepares for the arrival of the son she left behind in Senegal, a violent supernatural presence invades her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.
DRAMATIC (World): "Utama" by Alejandro Loayza Grisi
In the Bolivian highlands, an elderly Quechua couple has been living the same daily life for years. When an uncommon long drought threatens their entire way of life, Virginio and his wife Sisa face the dilemma of resisting or being defeated by the environment and time itself.
DOCUMENTARY (U.S.): "The Exiles" by Ben Klein and Violet Columbus
Documentarian Christine Choy tracks down three exiled dissidents from the Tiananmen Square massacre, in order to find closure on an abandoned film she began shooting with Renee Tajima-Peña in 1989.
DOCUMENTARY (World): "All that Breathes" by Shaunak Sen
Against the darkening backdrop of Delhi’s apocalyptic air and escalating violence, two brothers devote their lives to protect one casualty of the turbulent times: the bird known as the Black Kite.
Audience Award Winners
DRAMATIC (U.S.): "Cha Cha Real Smooth" by Cooper Raiff
A directionless college graduate embarks on a relationship with a young mom and her teenage daughter while learning the boundaries of his new bar mitzvah party-starting gig.
DRAMATIC (World): "Girl Picture" by Alli Haapasalo
Mimmi, Emma and Rönkkö are girls at the cusp of womanhood, trying to draw their own contours. In three consecutive Fridays two of them experience the earth moving effects of falling in love, while the third goes on a quest to find something she’s never experienced before: pleasure.
DOCUMENTARY (U.S.): "Navalny" by Daniel Roher
Shot as the story unfolded, a fly-on-the-wall documentary thriller about anti-authoritarian Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Recovering in Berlin after nearly being poisoned to death with the nerve agent Novichok, Navalny makes shocking discoveries about his assassination attempt and bravely decides to return home – whatever the consequences.
This film was also awarded the Audience Festival Favorite Award
DOCUMENTARY (World): "The Territory" by Alex Pritz
When a network of Brazilian farmers seizes a protected area of the Amazon rainforest, a young Indigenous leader and his mentor must fight back in defense of the land and an uncontacted group living deep within the forest.
Short Film Awards
Grand Jury Prize: "The Headhunter's Daughter" by Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan
Leaving her family behind, Lynn traverses the harrowing roads of the Cordilleran highlands to try her luck in the city as a country singer.
U.S. Fiction: "IF I GO WILL THEY MISS ME" by Walter Thompson-Hernandez
Lil’ Ant is obsessed with Pegasus, the Greek mythological character, since first learning about him at school in Watts, California. He begins to notice imaginary airplane people around his home, and yearns to fly with them.
International Fiction: "Warsha" by Dania Bdeir
A Syrian migrant working as a crane operator in Beirut volunteers to cover a shift on one of the most dangerous cranes, where he is able to find his freedom.
Non-Fiction: "Displaced" by Samir Karahoda
In postwar Kosovo, driven to keep their beloved sport table tennis alive, two local players wander from one obscure location to another carrying with them their club’s only possession: their tables.
Animation: Night Bus by Joe Hsieh
On a late-night bus, a panicked scream shatters the night’s calm. A necklace is stolen, followed by a tragic and fatal road accident. The series of intriguing events that follows reveal love, hatred, and vengeance.
