Nate Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation”, the drama about a slave revolt that became the sensation of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, has won the festival’s audience and jury prizes, TheWrap reports.
The film, which deals with the real-life rebellion led by Nat Turner, debuted to multiple standing ovations at Sundance only days after the Motion Picture Academy changed its voting rules in response to the #OscarsSoWhite furor. It ignited a bidding war at Sundance, and was sold to Fox Searchlight for $17.5 million, less than the $20 million offered by Neflix.
Over the last few years, Sundance winners have included the Oscar Best Picture nominees “Whiplash,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Winter’s Bone” and “Precious,” as well as “Fruitvale Station,” “The Sessions” and last year’s jury and audience winner, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.”
The grand jury prize for documentary went to “Weiner,” Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s film about disgraced politician Anthony Weiner.
In addition to “The Birth of a Nation,” audience awards went to “Between Land and Sea” in the dramatic categories, and “Jim: The James Foley Story” and “Sonita” in the documentary categories.
U.S. directing honors went to Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan for their so-called “farting corpse movie” with Daniel Radcliffe, “Swiss Army Man,” and to Roger Ross Williams for the documentary “Life, Animated.” World cinema directing awards went to Felix van Groeningen for “Belgica” and Michael Marczak for “All These Sleepless Nights.”
Performance awards were voted to Melanie Lynskey and Craig Robinson for “The Intervention” and “Morris From America” among U.S. films, and Vicky Hernandez and Manolo Cruz for “Between Sea and Land” in the world cinema field. Joe Seo won a breakthrough performance award for “Spa Night.”
The ceremony took place at the Basin Recreation Field House in Park City and was hosted by New Zealand writer/actor/director Taika Waititi.
