- Sundance Film Festival Awards 2010: Winners include Debra Granik’s Ozarks-set drama Winter’s Bone, David Michôd’s crime drama Animal Kingdom, Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s Afghanistan War-set Restrepo, and Mads Bruegger’s North Korea-set The Red Chapel.
Sundance Film Festival Awards 2010: Winter’s Bone, Animal Kingdom among top winners
Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone, Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s Restrepo, David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, and Mads Bruegger’s The Red Chapel / Det røde kapel were the top Jury Prize winners at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which divides a chunk of its awards, including “Best Picture,” into four categories: U.S. – Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema – Dramatic, and World Cinema Documentary.
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone chronicles a teenage girl’s difficult task of keeping what’s left of her family together in the dysfunctional, drug-addiction-plagued rural Ozarks of Missouri, while the documentary Restrepo follows a group of American soldiers in war-torn Afghanistan.
Winter’s Bone also earned director Granik and Anne Rosellini the Waldo Salt Award for Screenwriting (U.S.).
Starring Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn, Luke Ford, Joel Edgerton, and Jacki Weaver, the Australian drama Animal Kingdom revolves around a Melbourne crime family as it reaches a crisis point, while the Danish documentary The Red Chapel provides an unusual glimpse into weirdly mysterious North Korea.
Audience Awards
Audience awards for U.S.-made productions went to:
- The New York-set ensemble comedy-drama Happythankyoumoreplease, which marks the directorial debut of actor Josh Radnor, who also stars alongside Malin Akerman, Kate Mara, and Pablo Schneider.
- Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for ‘Superman’, which gives an “F” to the American public school system.
The World Cinema winners were:
- Peruvian writer-director Javier Fuentes-León’s gay romantic ghost story Undertow / Contracorriente, starring Manolo Cardona and Cristian Mercado.
- British filmmaker Lucy Walker’s documentary Waste Land, which depicts Brazilian artist Vik Muniz’s photographic project centered on recycled-garbage pickers in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
Best Director winners
The best U.S. directors were Eric Mendelsohn for the Long Island-set slice-of-life drama 3 Backyards, starring Embeth Davidtz, Edie Falco, and Elias Koteas; and Leon Gast for the documentary Smash His Camera, about the life of paparazzi photographer Ron Galella.
World Cinema Best Director winners were Bolivian Juan Carlos Valdivia for Southern District / Zona Sur, about a privileged La Paz family trying to cope with the rise of left-wing president Evo Morales; and Swiss Christian Frei for Space Tourists, a documentary focused on obscenely wealthy people who pay loads of money to become space cadets of sorts.
Southern District also earned Juan Carlos Valdivia the Waldo Salt Award for Screenwriting (World Cinema).
Special Jury Prizes
Sundance 2010’s Special Jury Prizes went to the following:
- Sympathy for Delicious, directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Mark Ruffalo and written by Christopher Thornton, who stars as a recently paralyzed DJ hooked on faith healing. Also featured are director Ruffalo, Juliette Lewis, Laura Linney, and Orlando Bloom as a rocker named The Stain.
- Josh Fox’s documentary GasLand, about natural gas’ deleterious effects on air and water.
- Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath’s documentary Enemies of the People, which chronicles Cambodia’s bloody modern history, partly via interviews with former Khmer Rouge officials, including some who slaughtered their fellow Cambodian nationals during the second half of the 1970s.
Additionally, Tatiana Maslany won a Special Jury Prize for Breakout Performance for her portrayal of a precocious teenager in Adriana Maggs’ Canadian drama Grown Up Movie Star.
More Sundance 2010 winners
Sundance 2010’s Best Cinematography awards went to Zak Mulligan for Diane Bell’s Death Valley-set road drama Obselidia; Kirsten Johnson and Laura Poitras for Poitras’ documentary The Oath; Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat for the Argentinean comedy-drama thriller The Man Next Door / El hombre de al lado, which they also directed; and Kate McCullough and Michael Lavelle for Ken Wardrop’s Irish documentary His and Hers.
Best Editing awards (given only to nonfiction entries) went to Penelope Falk for Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s U.S.-made Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which examines the discrepancies and similarities between the public persona and private life of hilarious/obnoxious (depending on one’s take) comedian/talk show hostess Joan Rivers; and to Joelle Alexis for Yael Hersonski’s German-Israeli A Film Unfinished / Geheimsache Ghettofilm, about the making of the unfinished, Warsaw Ghetto-themed 1942 Nazi propaganda film Das Ghetto.
The Best of Next Award (for films made for less than $50,000) went to Todd and Brad Barnes’ comedy Homewrecker, the story of a romantic ex-con locksmith written by the brothers Barnes and Sophie Goodhart. The eight filmmakers competing in this category selected the winning title.
Lastly, Diane Bell’s Obselidia was given the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for a feature film with a scientific or technology theme, while Jeremy Konner’s Drunk History: Douglass and Lincoln, and Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland’s New Zealand-made The Six Dollar Fifty Man topped the short films categories.
Jury members
Below is the list of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival jury members.
U.S. Documentary Competition Jury: Filmmakers Greg Barker, Dayna Goldfine, Morgan Spurlock and Ondi Timoner, and Wired senior editor Nancy Miller.
U.S. Dramatic Competition Jury: Novelist Russell Banks, producer Jason Kliot, director Karyn Kusama, actress Parker Posey, cinematographer Robert Yeoman.
World Cinema Documentary Competition Jury: Documentarian Jennifer Baichwal, PBS correspondent Jeffrey Brown, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival director Asako Fujioka.
World Cinema Dramatic Competition Jury: Writer-director Alison Maclean, Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum, producer Sigurjon Sighvatsson.
Shorts Competition Jury: Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, Wholphin DVD editor and cofounder Brent Hoff, Killer Films chief Christine Vachon.
Award-less U.S.-made titles
Among the U.S. entries that failed to win any Sundance 2010 awards are two dramas in which sex plays an important role:
- Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl, starring James Franco as – a far better-looking version of – the young, bespectacled, and controversial gay poet Allen Ginsberg. Also in the Howl cast: Aaron Tveit, Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels, and Oscar nominee David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck., 2005).
- Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, a romantic-psychological drama starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling as a married couple going back and forth in time – shades of Stanley Donen’s Two for the Road – as the narrative traces the sweet early days going sour. Also in the cast: Mike Vogel, John Doman, and Faith Wladyka.
Out-of-competition World Premieres
Sundance 2010 also featured a good number of out-of-competition World Premieres, among them:
- Writer-director Galt Niederhoffer’s The Romantics, which follows a group of former college buddies as they gather to celebrate the wedding of two of them. The ensemble cast includes Academy Award winner Anna Paquin (The Piano, 1993), Josh Duhamel, Katie Holmes, Adam Brody, Malin Akerman, Elijah Wood, Jeremy Strong, Dianna Agron, and Emmy-winning/Oscar-nominated veteran Candice Bergen (five Emmys for Murphy Brown; Oscar nod for Starting Over, 1979).
- Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple whose family life is turned upside down after they become acquainted with the biological slob (Mark Ruffalo) who had fathered their two teenage children (Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson).
- Like The Romantics, Gurinder Chadha’s It’s a Wonderful Afterlife revolves around the issue of matrimony, but with a West London setting where a traditional Indian mother wants her “aging” daughter to tie the knot – and fast. Hindering her plans, however, are mysterious deaths and meddling ghosts. In the cast: Shabana Azmi, Sendhil Ramamurthy, and Sally Hawkins.
Below is a partial list of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival’s competing titles.
U.S. – Dramatic
The Dry Land (Dir. & Scr.: Ryan Piers Williams)
Cast: Ryan O’Nan, America Ferrera, Wilmer Valderrama.Hesher (Dir.: Spencer Susser)
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Natalie Portman, Rainn Wilson, Piper Laurie, John Carroll Lynch.Holy Rollers (Dir.: Kevin Tyler Asch)
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha.Skateland (Dir.: Anthony Burns)
Cast: Shiloh Fernandez, A.J. Buckley, Ashley Greene, Brett Cullen.Welcome to the Rileys (Dir.: Jake Scott)
Cast: James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, Melissa Leo.World Cinema – Dramatic
All that I Love | Poland (Dir. & Scr.: Jacek Borcuch)
Cast: Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Jakub Gierszal, Mateusz Banasiuk.Boy | New Zealand (Dir. & Scr.: Taika Waititi)
Cast: Taika Waititi, James Rolleston.Four Lions | U.K. (Dir.: Chris Morris)
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Arsher Ali, Nigel Lindsay.Me Too / Yo, también | Spain (Dir. & Scr.: Álvaro Pastor & Antonio Naharro)
Cast: Pablo Pineda, Lola Dueñas, Antonio Naharro.Son of Babylon | Iraq (Dir.: Mohamed Al Daradji)
Cast: Yasser Talib, Shazda Hussein.U.S. Documentary
Bhutto (Dir.: Duane Baughman & Johnny O’Hara)
Casino Jack and the United States of Money (Dir.: Alex Gibney)
Freedom Riders (Dir.: Stanley Nelson)
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (Dir.: Tamra Davis)
The Tillman Story (Dir.: Amir Bar-Lev)
World Cinema Documentary
Fix ME | France, Palestinian Territories, Switzerland (Dir.: Raed Andoni)
Russian Lessons | Russia, Georgia, Norway (Dir.: Olga Konskaya & Andrei Nekrasov)
Secrets of the Tribe | Brazil (Dir.: José Padilha)
Sins of My Father | Argentina, Colombia (Dir.: Nicolas Entel)
“Sundance Film Festival Awards 2010” notes/references
Sundance Film Festival website.
Jennifer Lawrence Winter’s Bone image: Anonymous Content | Winter’s Bone Productions.
“Sundance Film Festival Awards 2010: Winter’s Bone” last modified in April 2025.