Sundance Film Festival Unveils 2023 Award Winners — Updating Live

The Sundance Film Festival has begun unveiling its Jury and Audience Award winners for 2023.

Jurors present for the announcement, livestreamed to the festival’s social media channels from The Ray Theatre in Park City, Utah, included Jeremy O. Harris and Marlee Matlin for U.S. Dramatic Competition, Ramona Diaz and Carla Gutierrez for U.S. Documentary Competition, Funa Maduka for World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and Madeleine Olnek for NEXT.

Deadline will update this story with the list of winners as they come in. The 2023 festival featured 111 features and 64 shorts, selected from 15,856 submissions, which were screened in Park City, Salt Lake City, and at the Sundance Resort. Over 75% of both short and feature-length works, along with many selected Indie Episodics, will be available for streaming via the fest’s online platform through January 29.

Sundance’s first in-person festival since the Covid pandemic was marked by a number of major sales — most of which we were first to report on. The first title to lock in a huge deal was Chloe Domont’s thriller Fair Play, starring Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich, which went to Netflix for around $20MM. John Carney’s musical drama Flora and Son, starring Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, went to Apple for around the same, with Searchlight taking the improvised ensemble comedy Theater Camp for around $8 million. Mubi picked up Ira Sachs’ relationship drama Passages, with A24 in talks to acquire the buzzy Midnight title Talk to Me as of Tuesday.

Last year’s Sundance ceremony solidified the awards trajectory of four of five contenders for the Documentary Feature Oscar in 2023 — those titles being Navalny (Documentary Competition Audience Award, Festival Favorite Award), Fire of Love (Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award), All That Breathes (World Cinema Documentary Competition Documentary Prize) and A House Made of Splinters (World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award). The festival proved even more relevant to the awards race the year prior, with Sian Heder’s Best Picture Oscar winner CODA and Questlove’s Best Doc Winner Summer of Soul highlighting its finger on the pulse across both narrative and documentary.

View the winners’ list below.

NEXT

Innovator Award

Kokomo City
Director: D. Smith

Audience Award

Kokomo City 
Director: D. Smith

SHORT FILMS AWARDS

Grand Jury Prize

When You Left Me On That Boulevard (U.S.A.)
Director: Kayla Abuda Galang

Jury Award: US Fiction

Rest Stop
Director: Crystal Kayiza

Jury Award: Directing, International

Valeria Hofmann
AliEN0089 (Chile)

Jury Award: Directing, US

Jarreau Carrillo
The Vacation

Jury Award: Animation

The Flying Sailor
Directors: Wendy Tilby, Amanda Forbis (Canada)

Jury Award: Nonfiction

Will You Look At Me (China)
Director: Shuli Huang

Jury Award: International Fiction

The Kidnapping of the Bride (Germany)
Director: Sophia Mocorrea

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize

Scrapper (UK)
Director: Charlotte Regan 

Directing Award

Marija Kavtaradze
Slow (Lithuania/Spain/Sweden)

Special Jury Award: Creative Vision

Animalia (France/Morocco/Qatar)
Director: Sofia Alaoui

Special Jury Award: Cinematography

Lílis Soares
Mami Wata (Nigeria)

Special Jury Award: Best Performance

Rosa Marchant
When It Melts (Belgium/Netherlands)

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize

The Eternal Memory (Chile)
Director: Maite Alberdi

Directing Award

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Estonia/France/Ireland)
Director: Anna Hints

Special Jury Award: Verite Filmmaking

Against the Tide (India)
Director: Sarvnik Kaur

Special Jury Award: Creative Vision

Fantastic Machine (Sweden/Denmark)
Director: Axel Danielson

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED WINNERS

Amazon Studios Nonfiction Award 

Jess Devaney
It’s Only Life After All

Amazon Studios Fiction Award

Kara Durrett
The Starling Girl

Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize

The Pod Generation
Director: Sophie Barthes

Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Editing Nonfiction

Mary Manhardt

Sundance Institute | Adobe Mentorship Award for Editing Fiction

Troy Takaki

Sundance/NHK Award 

Olive Nwosu
Lady

Sundance Institute | Stars Collective Imagination Awards 

Tamara Shogaolu 
40 Acres

Navid Khonsari, Vassiliki Khonsari, and Andres Perez-Duarte 
Block Party Bodega

Vanessa Keith 
Year 2180

Gayle Stevens Volunteer Award

Carlos Sanchez

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