On Saturday night the 2007 Sundance Film Festival award-winners for jury and audience selections were announced at the events closing Awards Ceremony in Park City, Utah. Both "Dark Matter" and "Nanking" won prizes. 

Director of the film Dark Matter Chen Shizheng (C) poses with stars of the film, Liu Ye (R) and Aidan Quinn, at the premiere during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on January 23, 2007. The film won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2007.

Dark Matter, directed by Chen Shi-Zheng and written by Billy Shebar, won this year's Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The film, inspired by real events, delves into the world of a brilliant Chinese cosmology student whose dreams are challenged when he arrives in the US to pursue his Ph.D.

Dark Matter, which screened in this year's Spectrum section, was recognized for its evocative portrayal of scientific passions, career politics and cultural conflicts in an astrophysics research laboratory. It was also recognized for its impressive achievement in filmmaking. This included note-worthy performances from Chinese actor Liu Ye and the US pair of Aidan Quinn and Meryl Streep.

Nanking, a film about the Japanese army's notorious Nanjing massacre during World War II, won the Documentary Editing Award from the Independent Film Competition Documentary Jury. This honored editors Hibah Sherif Frisina, Charlton McMillian and Michael Schweitzer for their work on the film.

Festival juries awarded top prizes to two films -- Padre Nuestro and Manda Bala -- and highlighted a range of movies that concerned world issues, the war in Iraq and families.

Padre Nuestro, which tells of an illegal immigrant from Mexico looking for his father in New York City, won the Grand Jury Prize for best drama made by a US filmmaker. Manda Bala, a look at crime and corruption in Brazil, earned the jury honor for top US documentary.

Festival director, Geoffrey Gilmore, called 2007 a "landmark year" due in large part to the numerous topics and quality of independent films screened at the top US festival for movies made outside Hollywood's mainstream studios.

"For so many different reasons, this work is exceptional in terms of how much of it will get into the marketplace, and the range of issues and maturity of the filmmakers," Gilmore said.

Padre Nuestro director, Christopher Zalla, said that while his movie dealt with illegal immigration to the United States, it was also a film that tried to paint a picture of New York as a city of immigrants.

"When we filmed the movie we talked to a lot of people crossing the (borders) and they were just families -- families coming to feed themselves and reunite with their family," Zalla said.

Sundance juries also hand out honors for international movies and the World Cinema drama prize went to Israeli movie Sweet Mud about a boy dealing with his mentally ill mother on a kibbutz in the 1970s. Denmark's Enemies of Happiness, which details the life of an Afghani woman politician, earned the World Cinema jury prize for best documentary.

The juries at Sundance, which is backed by actor Robert Redford's Sundance Institute for Filmmaking, are composed of five filmmakers and industry professionals for the US-made movies and three jury members for the World Cinema awards.

While the jury prizes are the top awards audiences also vote for their favorite films during the 10-day event held each January in the mountain town east of Salt Lake City.

The Audience Award for best film drama went to Grace is Gone. It stars John Cusack as a father of two coming to terms with the death of his wife in the Iraq war. This movie also earned the screenwriting award for its filmmaker, James Strouse.

Strouse said throughout the festival he'd been asked whether he intended his film to make a political statement and had answered that Grace is Gone focused on the families of the men and women who’d died. "The losses suffered in this war to the families left behind transcend political dogma," he said.

His movie was not the only war film honored at Sundance. The documentary jury gave a special prize to No End in Sight. It's about potential US policy mistakes over the Iraq war.

Hear and Now, director Irene Taylor Brodsky's personal story about her deaf parents' undergoing surgery to regain their hearing, won the audience trophy for best documentary.

In the World Cinema arena, In the Shadow of the Moon, an emotional tale of the Apollo astronauts from Britain's David Sington, was the audience documentary winner, while Irish musical Once earned the audience trophy for best drama.

Directing awards went to Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine for their documentary "War/Dance" about child soldiers in Uganda and to Jeffrey Blitz for his drama Rocket Science about a high school student with a stutter who learns lessons in life and love while a member of a debating team.

"The films in this year's program have opened up the possibilities of what independent film can be and will be in the future," said Geoffrey Gilmore. "The 2007 Sundance Film Festival award-winners reflect the talent, diversity and evolution of independent film and exemplify the artistic power of film to illuminate and explore issues that are prevalent in our global society."

The Independent Film Competition is the heart and soul of the Sundance Film Festival program. It has introduced audiences to many of the best American and international independent films and filmmakers of the past 24 years. Films selected to screen in the Dramatic and Documentary Competitions were eligible for a number of jury awards.

(Agencies via CRI January 29, 2007)