The 2022 installment of the Sundance Film Festival has wrapped, and awards were announced Friday, with the top jury prizes were awarded to director Nikyatu Jusu’s feature debut Nanny for U.S. Dramatic, with Christine Choy’s The Exiles winning for U.S. Documentary.
Juries and virtual audience members had the opportunity to vote for their favorites in a slew of categories out of 84 feature films and 59 short films — selected from 14,849 submissions. Fifty-three percent of this year’s jury-winning features were directed by one or more women, and 42 percent were directed by one or more person of color. Jusu is the second Black woman to win the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Dramatic, the preceding being Chinonye Chukwu for Clemency in 2019.
Starring Anna Diop, Nanny follows Aisha, an undocumented nanny working for a privileged couple in New York City. While dealing with the tremendous sorrow stemming from the separation from her son in Senegal, a violent supernatural presence invades her reality, threatening her realization of the American Dream. Thirty-three years in the making, The Exiles tracks down three exiled dissidents from the Tiananmen Square massacre to complete the reflective documentary Choy originally began in 1989.
“Today's awards represent the determination of visionary individuals, whose dynamic work will continue to change the culture and create discourse throughout the year,” said Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente.
Clinching the World Cinema Documentary title was Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes and the World Cinema Dramatic honor was awarded to Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama. All That Breathes poises itself within Delhi’s apocalyptic air and escalating violence, where two brothers devote their lives to protect the bird known as the Black Kite, endangered and one of many victims to the times. Another extension of environmental drama comes in Utama, where an elderly Quechua couple living in the Bolivian highlands has the routine machinations of their lives threatened by a long-lasting drought.
Festival standouts winning the Audience Awards included the U.S. documentary Navalny — also winning the Festival Favorite Award — and Cha Cha Real Smooth in U.S. Dramatic. Centering on recently dubbed terrorist and imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the namesake documentary follows the Russian anti-authoritarian activist from his assassination attempt recovery to his decision to face the worst back in his home country.
Cha Cha Real Smooth, the only festival winner to acquire U.S. distribution through AppleTV+, is a coming-of-age dramedy created by director-writer Cooper Raiff and producer-actor Dakota Johnson. It follows a college graduate navigating a new relationship with a single mother and the other nuances of post-grad life.
This year’s jurors included Chelsea Barnard, Marielle Heller, and Payman Maadi for U.S. Dramatic Competition; Garrett Bradley, Joan Churchill, and Peter Nicks for U.S. Documentary Competition; Andrew Haigh, Mohamed Hefzy, and La Frances Hui for World Cinema Dramatic Competition; and Emilie Bujès, Patrick Gaspard, and Dawn Porter for World Cinema Documentary Competition. Joey Soloway was the juror for the NEXT competition section. Penelope Bartlett, Kevin Jerome Everson, and Blackhorse Lowe juried the Short Film Program Competition.
Read below for a full list of the winners:
GRAND JURY PRIZES
- U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Nanny / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Nikyatu Jusu)
- U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary – The Exiles / U.S.A. (Directors: Ben Klein and Violet Columbus)
- World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Utama / Bolivia/Uruguay/France (Director and Screenwriter: Alejandro Loayza Grisi)
- World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary – All That Breathes / India, U.K. (Director and Producer: Shaunak Sen)
AUDIENCE AWARDS
- Audience Award: U.S. Documentary – Navalny / U.S.A. (Director: Daniel Roher)
- Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic – Cha Cha Real Smooth / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Cooper Raiff)
- Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic – Girl Picture / Finland (Director: Alli Haapasalo)
- Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary – The Territory / Brazil/Denmark/United States (Director: Alex Pritz)
- Audience Award: NEXT – Framing Agnes / Canada, U.S.A. (Director: Chase Joynt)
FESTIVAL FAVORITE AWARD
- Navalny / U.S.A. (Director: Daniel Roher)
JURY AWARDS FOR DIRECTING, SCREENWRITING & EDITING
- Directing Award: U.S. Documentary – I Didn’t See You There / U.S.A. (Director: Reid Davenport)
- Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic – Palm Trees and Power Lines / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Jamie Dack)
- Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary – A House Made Of Splinters / Denmark (Director: Simon Lereng Wilmont)
- Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic – KLONDIKE / Ukraine/Turkey (Director and Screenwriter: Maryna Er Gorbach)
- Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic – Emergency / U.S.A. (Director: Carey Williams, Screenwriter: KD Davila)
- Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award: U.S. Documentary – Fire Of Love / U.S.A. (Director: Sara Dosa)
SPECIAL JURY AWARDS
- U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award: Uncompromising Artistic Vision – blood / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Bradley Rust Gray)
- U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award: Ensemble Cast – John Boyega, Nicole Beharie, Selenis Leyva, Connie Britton, Olivia Washington, London Covington, and Michael K. Williams for 892 / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Abi Damaris Corbin, Screenwriter: Kwame Kwei-Armah)
- U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Impact for Change – Aftershock / U.S.A. (Directors and Producers: Paula Eiselt, Tonya Lewis Lee)
- U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Creative Vision – Descendant / U.S.A. (Director: Margaret Brown)
- World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award: Documentary Craft – The Territory / Brazil/Denmark/United States (Director: Alex Pritz)
- World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award: Excellence In Verité Filmmaking – Midwives / Myanmar (Director: Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing)
- World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award: Innovative Spirit – Leonor Will Never Die / Philippines (Director and Screenwriter: Martika Ramirez Escobar)
- World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award: Acting – Teresa Sánchez for Dos Estaciones / Mexico (Director and Screenwriter: Juan Pablo González, Screenwriters: Ana Isabel Fernández, Ilana Coleman)
NEXT INNOVATOR AWARD PRESENTED BY ADOBE
- Chase Joynt for Framing Agnes / Canada, U.S.A. (Director: Chase Joynt)
SHORT FILM AWARDS PRESENTED BY XRM Media
- Short Film Grand Jury Prize – The Headhunter’s Daughter / Philippines (Director and Screenwriter: Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan)
- Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction – IF I GO WILL THEY MISS ME / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Walter Thompson-Hernández)
- Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction – Warsha / France/Lebanon (Director and Screenwriter: Dania Bdeir)
- Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction – Displaced / Kosovo (Director and Screenwriter: Samir Karahoda)
- Short Film Jury Award: Animation – Night Bus / Taiwan (Director and Screenwriter: Joe Hsieh)
- Short Film Special Jury Award: Ensemble Cast – Zélia Duncan, Bruna Linzmeyer, Camila Rocha, Clarissa Ribeiro, and Lorre Motta for A wild patience has taken me here / Brazil (Director and Screenwriter: Érica Sarmet)
- Short Film Special Jury Award: Screenwriting – Sara Driver for Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver / United States (Directors: Lewie Kloster, Noah Kloster, Screenwriter: Sara Driver)