Beth de Araújo’s potent household drama “Josephine,” about an 8-year-old lady who witnesses a sexual assault, gained high prizes on the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. The juries introduced the winners Friday in Park City, Utah.
“Josephine,” starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan because the lady’s mother and father, grew to become one of many competition’s early consensus hits regardless of its troublesome material, which was primarily based on the filmmaker’s personal expertise at that age. The younger lady is performed by newcomer Mason Reeves, whom de Araújo found at a San Francisco farmer’s market. The movie gained each the U.S. dramatic grand jury prize and the competition’s viewers award however doesn’t but have distribution.
De Araújo wiped tears whereas accepting the award and gave an emotional speech about rape tradition and survivors.
“It’s very hard to talk about rape. Even just saying the word makes people uncomfortable. But because of this there only leaves more shame and silence for survivors,” De Araújo stated. “In order to honor survivors we must try to understand the people who rape in an attempt to prevent it from happening again. We have the resources, we just don’t make it a priority.”
Filmmakers Janicza Bravo, Nisha Ganatra and Azazel Jacobs had been the jury for the U.S. Dramatic Competition. They cited the movie’s “depth and nuance of storytelling” and its “delicate and elegant execution of a challenging subject matter.” Other titles within the U.S. dramatic competitors included Josef Kubota Wladyka’s “Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!,” which acquired a particular prize for guiding.
The grand jury prize for greatest U.S. documentary was awarded to “Nuisance Bear,” a few polar bear navigating a human world.
“It took us 10 years to make this movie,” stated “Nuisance Bear” co-director Gabriela Osio Vanden, who was visibly emotional accepting the prize. “We all do have a story to tell, including animals.”
“To Hold a Mountain,” a few mom and daughter within the distant highlands of Montenegro defending their land from turning into a NATO army coaching floor, took the worldwide documentary prize. “Shame and Money,” a few Kosovar household who has to maneuver from a village to the capital, picked up the narrative world cinema award.
Louis Paxton’s quirky Scottish movie “The Incomer,” a few pair of siblings on a distant island whose lives are upended when an ungainly authorities official (Domhnall Gleeson) arrives to attempt to evict them, gained the innovator award within the competition’s NEXT part.
Other movies that gained viewers awards included documentaries “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez,” concerning the pioneering playwright and screenwriter, and “One in a Million,” which chronicled a household’s journey from Syria to Germany and again once more throughout 10 years.
“American Pachuco” director David Alvarado stated Valdez got here to the primary ever Sundance in 1981, when it was nonetheless referred to as the U.S. Film and Video Festival, with the movie “Zoot Suit.” That a documentary about him performed on the final Sundance in Park City is a full circle second.
“It shows the full commitment to the Latino story that Sundance has always championed,” Alvarado stated.
The competition beforehand awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, which celebrates excellent movies representing science or expertise, to Andrew Stanton’s “In the Blink of an Eye.”
High profile Sundance movies like Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite,” the queer horror “Leviticus” and the Charli xcx film “The Moment” didn’t premiere in competitors and weren’t eligible for jury or viewers awards.
Sundance prizes can typically be the primary cease for eventual Oscar nominees and winners, which notably occurred with “CODA” and “Summer of Soul.” Documentaries extra so than narrative movies have a greater monitor document of creating it to the Oscars stage. Three of final 12 months’s particular prize winners are nominated for greatest documentary this 12 months, “The Perfect Neighbor,” “Cutting Through Rocks” and “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” and the 2 others had been among the many competition favorites, “Come See Me in the Good Light” and “The Alabama Solution.”
Last 12 months’s U.S. Dramatic grand jury prize went to the battle satire “Atropia,” whereas the viewers award was given to the darkish comedy “Twinless,” with Dylan O’Brien.
The Sundance Film Festival runs by Sunday.
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