The 2014 Sundance Film Festival came to a close yesterday, culminating in a two-hour awards ceremony hosted by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally.
Women directors, editors, cinematographers, and musicians received a third of the nearly thirty awards doled out by the film festival. Among them were Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde, who won the World Cinema Directing Award for 52 Tuesdays, a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl who adjusts to her mother’s transition into a man.
On the documentary side, cousins Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo won the Grad Jury Prize for Rich Hill. In an interview with Women and Hollywood, Droz Tragos described her feature debut as follows: “Rich Hill is our family hometown, and over the years it has fallen on hard times. We wanted to tell the stories of families living there who [seemed] to us largely ignored and clearly facing a lot of challenges.”
Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth won a World Cinema Directing Award for 20,000 Days on Earth, a “unique blend of documentary essay and cinematic fiction” about musician Nick Cave.
Scroll down for a list of the female Sundance awardees (out of 29 categories):
Grand Jury Prize (Documentary): Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo, Rich Hill
Cinematography (Documentary): Rachel Beth Anderson and Ross Kauffman, E-Team
Editing (Documentary): Jenny Golden and Karen Sim, Watchers of the Sky
Special Jury Award for Musical Score (Dramatic): The Octopus Project, Kumiko the Treasure Hunter
Special Jury Award for Use of Animation (Documentary): Edet Belzberg, Watchers of the Sky
World Cinema Directing Award (Dramatic): Sophie Hyde, 52 Tuesdays
World Cinema Directing Award (Documentary): Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 20,000 Days on Earth
World Cinema Cinematography Award (Dramatic): Ula Pontikos, Lilting
World Cinema Cinematography Award (Documentary): Thomas Balmes and Nina Bernfeld, Happiness