Sun Shines Twice on Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone

By Chase Masterson

David Hyde Pierce & John Cooper Rap

PARK CITY, UT (Hollywood Today) 1/30/10 — The winners of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival were announced tonight in Park City at a ceremony emceed by David Hyde Pierce, star of The Perfect Host. Pierce and Fest Director John Cooper began the informal evening to huge cheers with a rap of film titles.

The Grand Jury Prize in Dramatic Competition was presented to Winter’s Bone, directed by Debra Granik, who also won Best Screenplay with co-writer Anne Rosellini. The film, picked up by Roadside Attractions for low to mid-six figures, stars John Hawkes and Jennifer Lawrence; Granik’s sophomore feature is the story of an unflinching Ozark Mountain girl who hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her missing father while trying to keep her family intact.

Restrepo, directed by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary. Junger and Hetherington’s year dug in with theSecond Platoon in one of Afghanistan’s most strategically crucial valleys reveals extraordinary insight into the surreal combination of back breaking labor, deadly firefights, and camaraderie as the soldiers painfully push back the Taliban.

The World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary was awarded to Denmark’s The Red Chapel (Det Røde Kapel), directed by Mads Brügger. A journalist with no scruples, a self-proclaimed spastic, and a comedian travel to North Korea under the guise of a cultural exchange visit to challenge one of the world’s most notorious regimes.

Australia’s Animal Kingdom, written and directed by David Michôd, garnered the World Cinema Jury Prize in dramatic competition. After the death of his mother, a seventeen year-old boy is thrust precariously between an explosive criminal family and a detective who thinks he can save him.

The Audience Awards, presented this year by Honda are presented to both a dramatic and documentary film in four Competitions as voted by Sundance Film Festival audiences. The award for documentary was presented to WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, directed by Davis Guggenheim, for his examination of the crisis of public education in the United States through multiple interlocking stories.

happythankyoumoreplease, written and directed by Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother), garnered the Audience Award in dramatic competition. The film is about six New Yorkers juggling love, friendship, and the keenly challenging specter of adulthood.

Lucy Walker’sWasteland, about international art star Vik Muniz, won The World Cinema Audience Award for documentary; the film explores the lives of garbage pickers in the world’s largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro and the transformative power of art.

Contracorriente (Undertow) written and directed by Javier Fuentes-Leõn, is an unusual ghost story set on the Peruvian seaside in which a married fisherman struggles to reconcile his devotion to his male lover within his town’s rigid traditions. The film was awarded the World Cinema Audience Award in dramatic competition.

One-hundred and seventeen feature-length films were selected for the Festival out of 3,724 feature-length film submissions, composed of 1,920 U.S. and 1,804 international feature-length films. The line-up included 85 world premieres, 11 North American premieres, and 12 U.S. premieres representing 39 countries; 51 first-time filmmakers’ films were accepted, including 27 in competition.