“In the Summers,” an independent film about two sisters navigating fraught summer visits with their father, won the top prize in the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. dramatic competition on Friday. The movie also won the competition’s directing award for its first-time filmmaker, Alessandra Lacorazza.
“This film snuck up on us,” read a citation delivered by the jury, which was made up of the director Debra Granik, the cartoonist Adrian Tomine and the producer Lena Waithe. “A film like this can easily slip through the cracks, and for that reason we have chosen to shed light on this beautiful piece of cinema and we hope it finds the audience it so well deserves.”
That appeared to be the animating ethos for many of the jury’s picks, which went to worthy but lower-profile entries in competition, though the screenwriting award was given to Jesse Eisenberg for his buzzy comedy, “A Real Pain,” a road-trip movie he directed and starred in alongside Kieran Culkin. The film sold to Searchlight for $10 million in one of the festival’s biggest deals.
Audience awards voted on by festival attendees went to the likes of “Didi,” a teen coming-of-age movie from Sean Wang, the documentary “Daughters,” about four girls attending a daddy-daughter dance with their imprisoned fathers, and the Irish rap movie “Kneecap.”
Here are the rest of the top awards. For a complete list of winners, including short films and special jury prizes, go to sundance.org.
Grand Jury Prizes
U.S. Dramatic Competition: “In the Summers”
U.S. Documentary Competition: “Porcelain War”
World Cinema Dramatic Competition: “Sujo”
World Cinema Documentary Competition: “A New Kind of Wilderness”
Next Innovator Award: “Little Death”
Directing, U.S. Dramatic: Alessandra Lacorazza, “In The Summers”
Directing, U.S. Documentary: Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, “Sugarcane”
Directing, World Cinema Dramatic: Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi, “In the Land Of Brothers”
Directing, World Cinema Documentary: Benjamin Ree, “Ibelin”
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic: Jesse Eisenberg, “A Real Pain”
Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award, U.S. Documentary: Carla Gutiérrez, “Frida”
Audience Awards
Festival Favorite Award: “Daughters”
U.S. Dramatic Competition: “Didi”
U.S. Documentary Competition: “Daughters”
World Cinema Dramatic Competition: “Girls Will Be Girls”
World Cinema Documentary Competition: “Ibelin”
Next: “Kneecap”
