“River” Scores at Sundance
According to Variety:
“Frozen River,” Courtney Hunt‘s somber and suspenseful film about two desperate women who smuggle illegals into the United States, won the grand jury prize for dramatic features at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, while “The Wackness,” Jonathan Levine’s wacky coming-of-age serio-comedy about a teenage dope dealer, snagged the audience award.
On the documentary side, “Trouble the Water,” directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal and which offers a close-up, subjective account of survival during and after Hurricane Katrina, took the grand jury prize. Docu audience award went to Josh Tickell‘s “Fields of Fuel,” the story of one man’s impassioned effort to wean the country from oil and improve the environment.
In the World Cinema Competition, grand jury prize for dramatic feature was given to Swedish helmer Jens Jonsson‘s “King of Ping Pong,” which centers on the precarious social equilibrium of a chubby 16-year-old table tennis whiz. Audience award for international dramatic film was won by Jordanian-born helmer Amin Matalqa’s “Captain Abu Raed,” a heart-tugger about an Amman airport janitor mistaken by local kids for an airline pilot.
James Marsh’s “Man on Wire,” a British entry about Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who won instant notoriety in 1974 when he spent an hour walking back and forth on a wire between the newly constructed World Trade Center towers in New York, emerged as best documentary for both the jury and the audience in the international competition.
