SUNDANCE 2020: Black films and Black women win big at annual film festival

Radha Blank
(Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images)

The 2020 Sundance Film Festival was full of strong contenders and it looks like Black women dominated the directing categories with big wins.

Garrett Bradley won the top prize for directing a U.S. documentary for her powerful project TIME and Maimouna Doucoure nabbed the Directing Award for World Cinema Dramatic for Cuties. Radha Blank earned the Directing Award for U.S. Dramatic for The 40-Year-Old Version.

Our favorite flick of the festival, Charm City Kings, earned the U.S. Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast. Edson Oda‘s Nine Days won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and The Obamas’ Crip Camp won the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary.

SUNDANCE 2020: Obamas unveil enlightening, inspiring doc ‘Crip Camp’

Check out the full list of winners:

Grand Jury Prizes

U.S. Dramatic Competition – Minari (Lee Isaac Chung)

U.S. Documentary Competition – Boys State (Jesse Moss)

World Cinema Dramatic Competition – Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness (Massoud Bakhshi)

World Cinema Documentary Competition – The Reason I Jump (Jerry Rothwell)

Audience Awards

U.S. Dramatic Competition – Minari (Lee Isaac Chung)

U.S. Documentary Competition – Crip Camp (Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham)

World Cinema Dramatic Competition – Identifying Features (Fernanda Valadez)

World Cinema Documentary Competition – The Reason I Jump (Jerry Rothwell)

NEXT – I Carry You With Me (Heidi Ewing)

Directing

U.S. Dramatic Competition – Radha Blank for The 40-Year-Old Version

U.S. Documentary Competition – Garrett Bradley for Time

World Cinema Dramatic Competition – Maïmouna Doucouré for Cuties

World Cinema Documentary Competition – Iryna Tsilyk for The Earth Is Blue as an Orange

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award – Edson Oda for Nine Days

NEXT Innovator Prize – Heidi Ewing for I Carry You With Me

Special Jury Prizes

U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast – The cast of Charm City Kings

U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award: Auteur Filmmaking – Josephine Decker for Shirley

U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award: Neo-Realism – Eliza Hittman for Never Rarely Sometimes Always

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing – Tyler H. Walk for Welcome to Chechnya

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Innovation in Non-fiction Storytelling – Kirsten Johnson for Dick Johnson Is Dead

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker – Arthur Jones for Feels Good Man

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking – Eli Despres, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg for The Fight

World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting – Ben Whishaw for Surge

World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Visionary Filmmaking – Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese for This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection

World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Screenplay – Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez for Identifying Features

World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Storytelling – Benjamin Ree for The Painter and the Thief

World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography – Radu Ciorniciuc and Mircea Topoleanu for Acasa, My Home

World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing – Mila Aung-Thwin, Ryan Mullins and Sam Soko for Softie

Alfred P. Sloan Award – Tesla (Michael Almereyda)

Gayle Stevens Volunteer Award – Devon Edwards

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