Sundance 2024: ‘In the Summers,’ ‘Dìdi’ Win Top Awards

“In The Summers,” Alessandra Lacorazza’s film about two sisters and their relationship with their father, won the Grand Jury Prize on Friday in the U.S. Dramatic category at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Lacorazza also won the Directing Award.

“Dìdi,” directed by Sean Wang (a 2024 Oscar nominee for “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó”), won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award.

The awards ceremony took place at The Ray Theatre in Park City, Utah.

“Dìdi,” which focuses on a Taiwanese American boy’s final summer before high school, also won a special award for its ensemble, which includes Izaac Wang, Joan Chen, Shirley Chen, Chang Li Hua. Nico Parker, from “Suncoast,” won a special award for Breakthrough Performance.

Jesse Eisenberg won the screenwriting prize for “A Real Pain.” Jack Begert’s “Little Death” won the NEXT award for innovation.

In the U.S. Documentary section, “Porcelain War” claimed the Grand Jury award, while the directing prize went to Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie for “Sugarcane.” “Daughters,” Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s documentary about young girls preparing for a dads-and-daughters dance with their incarcerated fathers, won both the Festival Favorite Award (selected by the audience from all feature films at the festival) and the Audience Award. Carla Gutiérrez won the documentary editing award for “Frida.”

In the World Cinema Dramatic category, the jury chose “Sujo” as the best film, and in World Cinema Documentary, “A New Kind of Wilderness” took the top prize.

Audience Awards in the international categories went to the Indian/French production “Girls Will Be Girls” for dramatic feature, while “Ibelin,” from Norway, took home the prize for documentary. “Ibelin” director Benjamin Ree also won for directing.

Additional winners included “Girls Will Be Girls,” “Ibelin,” “Little Death,” “Kneecap,” “In the Land of Brothers,” “Gaucho Gaucho” and “Union.”

This year’s Sundance festival, which celebrated its 40th anniversary, showcased 82 films selected from 17,435 submissions from 153 countries or territories, including 4,410 feature films. Of the feature submissions, 1,679 were from the U.S. and 2,741 were international.

The members of the juries were: Debra Granik, Adrian Tomine and Lena Waithe (U.S. Dramatic Competition); Shane Boris, Nicole Newnham and Rudy Valdez (U.S. Documentary Competition); Anita Gou, Mira Nair and Rui Poças (World Cinema Dramatic Competition); Mandy Chang, Monica Hellström and Shaunak Sen (World Cinema Documentary Competition); Christina Oh, Danny Pudi and Charlotte Regan (Short Film Program Competition); and Zal Batmanglij (NEXT competition section).

Last year, “A Thousand and One,” A.V. Rockwell’s drama about a mother who kidnaps her son from the foster care system, took the Grand Jury Prize, while Christopher Zalla’s “Radical” took the Audience Award.

Past winners of the Sundance jury prizes include “Nanny,” “Fruitvale Station,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore,” “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” and Oscar winners “Whiplash,” “Minari,” “Summer of Soul” and “CODA.”

The full list of winners is below.

U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic: “In The Summers”
U.S. Dramatic Directing Award: Alessandra Lacorazza, “In the Summers”
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: US Dramatic: Jesse Eisenberg, “A Real Pain”
Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award: U.S. Documentary Carla Gutiérrez, “FRIDA”
US Dramatic Special Jury Award: Ensemble: “Dìdi”
US Dramatic Special Jury Award: Breakthrough Performance: Nico Parker, “Suncoast”

NEXT Innovator Award: “Little Death” 
Special Jury Award for NEXT: “Desire Lines”

US Grand Jury Prize: Documentary: “Porcelain War”
Directing Award: U.S. Documentary: Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, “Sugarcane” 
U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Sound: “Gaucho Gaucho” 
U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for the Art of Change: “Union”

Festival Favorite Award: “Daughters”
Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic: “Dìdi”
Audience Award: U.S. Documentary: “Daughters”
Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary: “Ibelin”
Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic: “Girls Will Be Girls”
Audience Award: NEXT: “Kneecap”

World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic: “Sujo”
World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary “A New Kind of Wilderness”
Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary: Benjamin Ree, “Ibelin”
Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic: Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi, “In The Land Of Brothers” 
World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Craft: “Nocturnes”
World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematic Innovation: Johan Grimonprez for “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” 
World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Original Music: Peter Raeburn, “Handling the Undead”
World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting: Preeti Panigrahi, “Girls Will Be Girls”

Short Film Grand Jury Prize: Alex Lora Cercos, “The Masterpie”
Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction: Kate Jean Hollowell, “Say Hi After You Die”
Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction: An Chu, “The Stag” 
Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction: Jack Dunphy, “Bob’s Funeral”
Short Film Jury Award: Animation: Phoebe Jane Hart, “Bug Diner” 
Short Film Special Jury Prize for Directing: Masha Ko, “The Looming”
Short Film Special Jury Prize for Directing: Makoto Nagahisa, “Pisko the Crab Child is in Love”

Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize: “Love Me”

Sundance Institute | Amazon MGM Studios Producers Award for Nonfiction: Toni Kamau, “The Battle for Laikipia”
Sundance Institute | Amazon MGM Studios Producers Award for Fiction: Brad Becker-Parton, “Stress Positions” 
Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Nonfiction: Kristina Motwani
Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Fiction: Pamela Martin
The Sundance Institute | NHK Award: Saim Sadiq, “We Are Never Going to Die”

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