Awards were handed out Saturday night for the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. One of the major winners was a film about a Korean immigrant family pursuing the American Dream.
The 2020 Festival screened 128 feature films over 10 days.
A big winner on the weekend was “Minari” which won both the Grand Jury Prize for the U.S. Dramatic competition, and the Audience Award in the same category. The story, set in the 1980’s, concerns a Korean father (played by “Walking Dead” star Steven Yeun) who moves his family from L.A to Arkansas to pursue his dream of a farm.
The film is an autobiographical tale for director Lee Isaac Chung, who studied film at the University of Utah.
The Grand Jury honor for a U.S. Documentary went to “Boys State” about 17,000 students in Texas building a representative government from the ground up.
The Audience Award for U.S. Documentary went to “Crip Camp”, the story of a 1970’s summer camp for disabled youngsters that helped to spark a civil-rights movement a few years later.
In the World Cinema program, the Audience Award for Documentary went to “The Reason I Jump” looking at the experiences of non-speaking autistic people around the world.
In the World Dramatic category, audiences said their favorite was “Identifying Features’ about two people journeying to the Mexican border in search of their relatives. The film also picked up a Special Jury Award for Best Screenplay.
The Grand Jury Prize for a World Documentary went to “Epicentro” a film that uses Cuba as a focus to examine cultural and financial upheavals in the world.
The Grand Jury honor for a Dramatic film in World Cinema went to “Yalda, a Night For Forgiveness” the story of an Iranian woman who can only avoid a death sentence for accidentally killing her husband by seeking forgiveness on a realty-TV show.
In the “Next” category, two awards went to the film “I Carry You With Me” an epic love story and immigrant tale. The film won the Audience Award, and also got an Innovator Award.
The Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize for a film dealing with science or technology went to “Tesla”, starring Ethan Hawke as the legendary inventor.
Among other awards, the film “Nine Days” filmed in Utah, won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.
