2015 Sundance Winners

The 2015 Sundance Film Festival concluded on Saturday (January 31) night with a Tig Notaro-hosted award ceremony in which it seemed like nearly everything was given an award by one of the Festival's juries.

"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl," directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, won both the US Dramatic Jury Prize and Audience Prize, an increasingly less rare double.

On the US Documentary side, Crystal Moselle's "The Wolfpack" won the Grand Jury Prize, but "Meru" won the Audience Award.

John Maclean's "Slow West" won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize, while Chad Garcia's "Russian Woodpecker" was the World Cinema Documentary Grand Prize winner.

While "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" was one of the most buzzed-about titles in the US Dramatic Competition, several other rave-winners picked up key prizes on Saturday night, including the Grand Jury Directing Award to Robert Eggers for "The Witch," the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for Tim Talbott for "The Stanford Prison Experiment" and a cinematography prize to Brandon Trost for "The Diary of a Teenage Girl."

The exhaustive honorees are as follows:

The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary:
The Wolfpack / U.S.A. (Director: Crystal Moselle) 

The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic:
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl / U.S.A. (Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Screenwriter: Jesse Andrews)

The World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary:
The Russian Woodpecker / United Kingdom (Director: Chad Gracia) 

The World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic:
Slow West / United Kingdom, New Zealand (Director and screenwriter: John Maclean) 

The Audience Award: U.S. Documentary:
Meru / U.S.A. (Directors: Jimmy Chin, E. Chai Vasarhelyi)

The Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic:
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl / U.S.A. (Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Screenwriter: Jesse Andrews)

The Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary:
Dark Horse / United Kingdom (Director: Louise Osmond)

The Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic:
Umrika / India (Director and screenwriter: Prashant Nair)

The Audience Award: NEXT:
James White / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Josh Mond) 

The Directing Award: U.S. Documentary:
Matthew Heineman for Cartel Land / U.S.A., Mexico (Director: Matthew Heineman)

The Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic:
Robert Eggers for The Witch / U.S.A., Canada (Director and screenwriter: Robert Eggers)

The Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary:
Kim Longinotto for Dreamcatcher / United Kingdom (Director: Kim Longinotto) — 

The Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic:
Alanté Kavaïté for The Summer of Sangaile / Lithuania, France, The Netherlands (Director and screenwriter: Alanté Kavaïté)

The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic:
Tim Talbott for The Stanford Prison Experiment / U.S.A. (Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Screenwriter: Tim Talbott)

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact:
Marc Silver for 3½ MINUTES / U.S.A. (Director: Marc Silver)

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Vérité Filmmaking:
Bill Ross and Turner Ross for Western / U.S.A., Mexico (Directors: Bill Ross, Turner Ross)

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Break Out First Feature:
Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe for (T)ERROR / U.S.A. (Directors: Lyric R. Cabral, David Felix Sutcliffe)

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography:
Matthew Heineman for Cartel Land / U.S.A., Mexico (Director: Matthew Heineman)

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Excellence in Cinematography:
Brandon Trost for The Diary of a Teenage Girl / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Marielle Heller)

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Excellence in Editing:
Lee Haugen for Dope / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Rick Famuyiwa)

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision:
Advantageous / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Phang, Screenwriters: Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang)

A World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Unparalleled Access:
The Chinese Mayor / China (Director: Hao Zhou)

A World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Impact:
Pervert Park / Sweden, Denmark (Directors: Frida Barkfors, Lasse Barkfors)

A World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing:
Jim Scott for How to Change the World / United Kingdom, Canada (Director: Jerry Rothwell)

A World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematography:
Germain McMicking for Partisan / Australia (Director: Ariel Kleiman, Screenwriters: Ariel Kleiman, Sarah Cyngler) 

A World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting:
Jack Reynor for Glassland / Ireland (Director and screenwriter: Gerard Barrett) 

A World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting:
Regina Casé and Camila Márdila for The Second Mother / Brazil (Director and screenwriter: Anna Muylaert)

So if the traditiona will be like the last two years i can predict Me and Earl and the Dying Girl will be the next awards season. Mistress America, Me, Earl And The Dying Girl, Brooklyn, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Grandma, Dark Horse, Don Verdean, Knock Knock got the IT distributors. I wanna watch true Story tho.

Can't wait for :

A Walk in the Woods (dir. Ken Kwapis)

The erstwhile Sundance Kid himself, Robert Redford, plays award-winning travel writer Bill Bryson in the opening gala A Walk in the Woods. The film is based on Bryson’s trek along the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail accompanied by two friends (Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson), revealing that the human condition is no walk in the park.

True Story (dir. Rupert Goold)

English theatre director Rupert Goold’s first feature film, fittingly based on real-life events, tells of a convicted murderer, Christian Longo (James Franco), who bizarrely attempted to steal the identity of a disgraced New York Times reporter named Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill).

Mistress America (dir. Noah Baumbach)

Director Noah Baumbach, king of the indie flick, is rarely more at home than at Sundance. Following The Squid and the Whale (2005) andFrances Ha (2012), this film is the story of a lonely college freshman (Lola Kirke, sister of Girls' Jemima Kirke) in New York, whose life is rejuvenated by her friendship with her soon-to-be stepsister (Greta Gerwig).

The Stanford Prison Experiment (dir. Kyle Patrick Alvarez)

Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez returns to Sundance with his intriguing The Stanford Prison Experiment, which is based on the real-life research of Dr. Philip Zimbardo. It recounts the professor’s study on the psychology of imprisonment, which was tested on 1970s Ivy League undergraduates with disturbing results.

Experimenter (dir. Michael Almereyda)

A potential companion piece to The Stanford Prison Experiment. Set a decade earlier, in 1961, it recounts the social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s "obedience experiments" at Yale University. In the study, a startling 65 per cent of subjects unquestioningly submitted to the commands of an lab-coated figure and delivered potentially fatal electric shocks to other people. Expect sparks to fly, meanwhile, between Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) and his love-interest student (Winona Ryder).

The Hunting Ground (dir. Kirby Dick)

Kirby Dick is a two-time Oscar nominee for his documentaries about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (Twist of Faith) and the US military (The Invisible War). His latest film is a corrosive exploration of sexual crime on US college campuses (and concomitant institutional complicity). It could hardly be more timely, with the recent media storm over Rolling Stone’s inaccurate coverage of the issue.

Last Days in the Desert (dir. Rodrigo García)

Rodrigo García’s Last Days in the Desert stars Ewan McGregor as Jesus, who – fatigued and hallucinating – is met and tested by the Devil. Oscar-nominated director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki is responsible for the exquisite cinematography, following his impressive work on Birdman(2014) and Gravity (2013).

The End of the Tour (dir. James Ponsoldt)

A dramatisation of the five-day interview between Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) and novelist David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) in 1996, in which the roles of journalist and interviewee became increasingly loose.

Results (dir. Andrew Bujalski)

A change of direction for director and screenwriter Andrew Bujalski, whose last film, Computer Chess, was an eccentric fiction about a 1980 computer programming tournament. His next effort imagines a romance between two personal trainers, played by the reliably excellent Guy Pearce and How I Met Your Mother's Cobie Smulders.

Don Verdean (dir. Jared Hess)

Jared Hess has a talent for conjuring cult characters (think of 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite and 2006’s Nacho Libre). This is the story of Don Verdean, a devout man of faith who spreads the gospel from his run-down motor home, but is led down a far from righteous path.

I Am Michael (dir. Justin Kelly)

One of the most controversial offerings at the festival: James Franco plays Michael Glatze, a gay activist who renounced his homosexuality in order to become a Christian pastor.

Z for Zachariah (dir. Craig Zobel)

Based on the novel by Robert C O'Brien, this film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine as two men primitively tussling for the affections of a young woman (played by Margot Robbie) in a post-apocalyptic world.

Brooklyn (dir. John Crowley)

Soon after moving to 1950s New York City, lovestruck Irish immigrant Ellis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) is forced to choose between her past and present. It’s a classic romantic conundrum from director John Crowley. Brooklyn is based on Colm Tóibín’s Costa Award-winning book and adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby.

Lila & Eve (dir. Charles Stone III)

A rare glimmer of Hollywood at Sundance comes in the form of Jennifer Lopez, as the titular Eve, providing a foil to single mother Lila (Viola Davis), whose son Stephon is murdered in a drive-by shooting. Charles Stone III’s first feature for a decade evidently reflects a post-Eric Garner world, as institutional incompetence forces Lila to become a vigilante and do justice herself.

Strangerland (dir. Kim Farrant)

In Kim Farrant’s directorial debut, Catherine (Nicole Kidman) and Matthew Parker’s (Joseph Fiennes) two teenagers go missing in the unforgiving Australian desert, after a dust storm strikes.

Mississippi Grind (dir. Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden)

Gifted poker player Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) bonds with a charismatic young drifter (Ryan Reynolds), and the pair gamble their way across the States to a legendary high-stakes game in New Orleans.

Tig (dir. Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York)

The last laugh must go to Tig, which follows the absurdist journey of comedian Tig Notaro, who – in the space of four months – was hit by bereavement, the break-up of a long-term relationship, and a diagnosis of both pneumonia and cancer.