Film festival awards really aren’t my thing. I’ve watched too many terrible, pretentious movies with festival accolades plastered all over their posters. Festival opinions are not to be trusted, even if the festival is Sundance. But for those of you who are interested, it was a split decision between audiences and experts as this year’s Sundance Film Festival wrapped up in Utah. In either case, issue movies dominated the festival’s closing awards.
A movie about a Mexican boy traveling with illegal immigrants won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, while the already heavily talked about John Cusack movie Grace is Gone won the fest’s audience award. Grace is Gone is about a father who can’t bring himself to tell his daughters that their mother has been killed in Iraq. In addition to winning the top audience prize, Grace also won the Waldo Salt screenwriting award.
Other winners included Manda Bala, a film about corruption in Brazil, winning the Documentary Grand Jury Prize. Audience documentary award went to Hear and Now, a movie about director Taylor Brodsky’s deaf parents decision to get a cochlear implants (I’d swear I saw that one 20 years ago as an after school special). A movie from Israel about a mentally ill woman and her son (handicaps, especially mental ones are always big awards getters) called Sweet Mud won the international World Cinema jury prize.
Sadly, aside from Grace is Gone, not one of those movies sounds worth watching. As usual, I’m glad I wasn’t at Sundance. Oh I know as a film critic I’m supposed to moan about how much I wish I could be there, and talk about how wonderful all these independent movies are and what a shame it is that no one will see them. Bah. Let’s be realistic. Nobody but a scant handful of people wants to see movies about dead moms, desperate illegal immigrants, and cripples. I’m not sure how critics get through the festival without offing themselves. Real moviegoers want to see Michael Bay blow something up. I’d rather see Steven Spielberg do it, but tonight at least, looking over this list of preachy, boring, wholly depressing films I share in the sentiment.
