The Sundance Film Festival has begun unveiling its Jury and Audience Award winners for 2023.
Jurors present for the announcement, livestreamed to the festival’s social media channels from The Ray Theatre in Park City, Utah, included Jeremy O. Harris and Marlee Matlin for U.S. Dramatic Competition, Ramona Diaz and Carla Gutierrez for U.S. Documentary Competition, Funa Maduka for World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and Madeleine Olnek for NEXT.
Deadline will update this story with the list of winners as they come in. The 2023 festival featured 111 features and 64 shorts, selected from 15,856 submissions, which were screened in Park City, Salt Lake City, and at the Sundance Resort. Over 75% of both short and feature-length works, along with many selected Indie Episodics, will be available for streaming via the fest’s online platform through January 29.
Sundance’s first in-person festival since the Covid pandemic was marked by a number of major sales — most of which we were first to report on. The first title to lock in a huge deal was Chloe Domont’s thriller Fair Play, starring Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich, which went to Netflix for around $20MM. John Carney’s musical drama Flora and Son, starring Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, went to Apple for around the same, with Searchlight taking the improvised ensemble comedy Theater Camp for around $8 million. Mubi picked up Ira Sachs’ relationship drama Passages, with A24 in talks to acquire the buzzy Midnight title Talk to Me as of Tuesday.
Last year’s Sundance ceremony solidified the awards trajectory of four of five contenders for the Documentary Feature Oscar in 2023 — those titles being Navalny (Documentary Competition Audience Award, Festival Favorite Award), Fire of Love (Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award), All That Breathes (World Cinema Documentary Competition Documentary Prize) and A House Made of Splinters (World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award). The festival proved even more relevant to the awards race the year prior, with Sian Heder’s Best Picture Oscar winner CODA and Questlove’s Best Doc Winner Summer of Soul highlighting its finger on the pulse across both narrative and documentary.
View the winners’ list below.
FESTIVAL FAVORITE AWARD
Radical
Director: Christopher Zalla
U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Audience Award
The Persian Version
Director: Maryam Keshavarz
Directing Award
Sing J. Lee
The Accidental Getaway Driver
Jury Award: Creative Vision
Magazine Dreams
Director: Elijah Bynum
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award
Maryam Keshavarz
The Persian Version
Special Jury Award: Acting
Lio Mehiel
Mutt
Jury Award: Ensemble
Theater Camp
Directors: Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman
U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Grand Jury Prize
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
Directors: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson
Audience Award
Beyond Utopia
Director: Madeleine Gavin
Directing Award
Luke Lorentzen
A Still Small Voice
Special Jury Award: Clarity of Vision
The Stroll
Directors: Kristen Lovell, Zackary Drucker
Special Jury Award: Freedom of Expression
Bad Press
Directors: Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, Joe Peeler
Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award
Daniela I. Quiroz
Going Varsity in Mariachi
WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Audience Award
20 Days in Mariupol (Ukraine)
Director: Mstylav Chernov
Grand Jury Prize
The Eternal Memory (Chile)
Director: Maite Alberdi
Directing Award
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Estonia/France/Ireland)
Director: Anna Hints
Special Jury Award: Verite Filmmaking
Against the Tide (India)
Director: Sarvnik Kaur
Special Jury Award: Creative Vision
Fantastic Machine (Sweden/Denmark)
Director: Axel Danielson
WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Audience Award
Shayda (Australia)
Director: Noora Niasari
Grand Jury Prize
Scrapper (UK)
Director: Charlotte Regan
Directing Award
Marija Kavtaradze
Slow (Lithuania/Spain/Sweden)
Special Jury Award: Creative Vision
Animalia (France/Morocco/Qatar)
Director: Sofia Alaoui
Special Jury Award: Best Performance
Rosa Marchant
When It Melts (Belgium/Netherlands)
Special Jury Award: Cinematography
Lílis Soares
Mami Wata (Nigeria)
NEXT
Audience Award
Kokomo City
Director: D. Smith
Innovator Award
Kokomo City
Director: D. Smith
SHORT FILMS AWARDS
Grand Jury Prize
When You Left Me On That Boulevard (U.S.A.)
Director: Kayla Abuda Galang
Jury Award: US Fiction
Rest Stop
Director: Crystal Kayiza
Jury Award: Directing, International
Valeria Hofmann
AliEN0089 (Chile)
Jury Award: Directing, US
Jarreau Carrillo
The Vacation
Jury Award: Animation
The Flying Sailor
Directors: Wendy Tilby, Amanda Forbis (Canada)
Jury Award: Nonfiction
Will You Look At Me (China)
Director: Shuli Huang
Jury Award: International Fiction
The Kidnapping of the Bride (Germany)
Director: Sophia Mocorrea
PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED WINNERS
Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize
The Pod Generation
Director: Sophie Barthes
Amazon Studios Nonfiction Award
Jess Devaney
It’s Only Life After All
Amazon Studios Fiction Award
Kara Durrett
The Starling Girl
Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Editing Nonfiction
Mary Manhardt
Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Editing Fiction
Troy Takaki
Sundance/NHK Award
Olive Nwosu
Lady
Sundance Institute | Stars Collective Imagination Awards
Tamara Shogaolu
40 Acres
Navid Khonsari, Vassiliki Khonsari, and Andres Perez-Duarte
Block Party Bodega
Vanessa Keith
Year 2180
Gayle Stevens Volunteer Award
Carlos Sanchez
