“Nanny” was the big winner at the Sunday 2022 Film Festival Awards, announced in a virtual awards ceremony Friday. This year’s Best of the Fest announcement caps off the second year in a row in which the festival was forced to go virtual amid the pandemic, along with Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” which nabbed the top audience award in the dramatic category.
Although the awards were announced virtually, the emotion was palpable as juror Chelsea Bernard announced that director and screenwriter Nikyatu Jusu had won for her harrowing story of a an undocumented nanny working for a privileged couple in New York City, at the same time dealing with the pending arrival of the son she left behind in Senegal.
Jusu burst into in tears as she heard the news. “You guys shouldn’t have done it to me like this!” she exclaimed, smiling through her tears. She said she knew she had won the awards because her recently deceased father was “pulling strings in on my behalf” from the other side.
Over 80 feature films played at this year’s Sundance, as well as six indie episodic projects, 15 New Frontier projects and 59 short films that drew from the festival’s largest submission pool ever.
Last year both “CODA” and “Summer of Soul” swept the top prizes at Sundance, winning both the Grand Jury Prizes in their respective categories and the audience awards. It was only the third time that a dramatic film and a documentary have won the top audience and jury awards in the same year. And it also was the first time that two films won the top three awards in their categories when “CODA” and “Hive” managed to win the Grand Jury Prize, the Audience Award and the Directing Award.
“This year’s entire program has proven that no matter the context, independent storytelling remains a pivotal tool in expanding critical dialogues, and these stories will and must be shared,” Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente said upon introducing the awards ceremony.
“This year’s festival expressed a powerful convergence; we were present, together, as a community connected through the work. And it is work that has already changed those who experienced it,” festival director Tabitha Jackson added.
This year’s jurors were: Chelsea Barnard, Marielle Heller, and Payman Maadi for U.S. Dramatic Competition; Garrett Bradley, Joan Churchill, and Peter Nicks for U.S. Documentary Competition; Andrew Haigh, Mohamed Hefzy, and La Frances Hui for World Cinema Dramatic Competition;and Emilie Bujès, Patrick Gaspard, and Dawn Porter for World Cinema Documentary Competition. Joey Soloway was the juror for the NEXT competition section. Penelope Bartlett, Kevin Jerome Everson, and Blackhorse Lowe juried the Short Film Program Competition.
(Excerpt) Read more in: The Wrap