Sundance jurors took the aquatic theme and ran with it.
The 2008 edition of Robert Redford's annual indie wingding wrapped up Saturday night with Frozen River winning the Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Feature and Trouble the Water scoring the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary.
Submitted by first-time filmmaker Courtney Hunt, Frozen River is a remarkable drama about a desperate trailer mom and a Mohawk girl who team up to smuggle illegal immigrants across the Canadian border into the United States.
"[The award] was so big I didn't even know what it was, and people were like, that's a good one, you definitely want to win that one," Hunt told E! Online. "I'm thrilled. When you live with something in your head all these years and then the world sees it and they connect to it, it's an incredibly satisfying feeling."
Sundance veteran Quentin Tarantino, who headed up this year's jury, heaped praise on the neophyte director and her film.
"It doesn't look like a movie, doesn't feel like a movie, it's a wonderful depiction of poverty in America that took my breath away," Tarantino said. "And then somewhere around the last hour it put my heart in a vice and proceeded to twist that vice until the last frame. And all of a sudden this completely naturalistic movie was one of the most exciting thrillers I'm going to see this year."
Trouble the Water had a similar effect on audiences here. The powerful and poignant Katrina exposé by former Michael Moore producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal features verité footage shot by two Katrina survivors as they struggled to escape the deadly floodwaters that engulfed the Lower Ninth Ward.
"It's been a long road to get to this place," codirector Deal told E! Online. "We're really hopeful this will now see the light of day in the theater, because we believe it has the ability to transform people and to run over certain barriers."
Another documentary to make its mark at this year's fest was James Marsh's Man on Wire, which nabbed the World Cinema Jury Prize for Best Documentary.
The film plays like a heist movie as it chronicles French artist Phillipe Petit's incredible (and incredibly illegal) high-wire dance between New York's Twin Towers in 1974, an act of daredevilry that eventually became known as "artistic crime of the century." The doc also earned the World Cinema Audience Award.
"You've got impeccable taste," Petit told the audience after joining Marsh on stage to receive the accolade.
Swedish helmer Jens Jonsson's family drama King of Ping Pong scored the World Cinema Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Film.
Sundance, which has a worldwide reputation for discovering and nurturing emerging talent, bestowed its Directing Award for Best Dramatic Film on Lance Hammer for Ballast, a riveting drama about a Mississippi Delta family torn apart by tragedy.
Nanette Burstein picked up the Directing Award for Best Documentary for American Teen, focusing on four Indiana high school seniors.
One of Sundance's most prestigious prizes, the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, went to Alex Rivera and David Riker for their screenplay for the former's sci-fi feature, Sleep Dealer.
Rivera also was named the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, which awards $20,000 to a filmmaker whose work uses science or technology as an important theme or in the depiction of a major character.
Here's the complete list of winners at indie film's big dance:
Dramatic Grand Jury Prize: Frozen River
Documentary Grand Jury Prize: Troubled Water
World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize: King of Ping Pong
World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize: Man on Wire
Documentary Audience Award: Fields of Fuel
Dramatic Audience Award: The Wackness
World Cinema Documentary Audience Award: Man on Wire
World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award: Captain Abu Raed
Directing, Documentary: Nanette Burstein, American Teen
Directing, Dramatic: Lance Hammer, Ballast
World Cinema Directing, Documentary: Nino Kirtadze, Durakovo: Village of Fools
World Cinema Directing, Dramatic: Anna Melikyan, Mermaid
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: Alex Rivera and David Riker, Sleep Dealer
World Cinema Screenwriting Award: Samuel Benchetrit, I Always Wanted to Be a Gangster
Editing, Documentary: Joe Bini, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
Editing, World Cinema Documentary: Irene Dol, The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins
Cinematography, Documentary: Phillip Hunt and Steven Sebring, Patti Smith: Dream of Life
Cinematography, Dramatic: Lol Crawley, Ballast
Cinematography, World Cinema Documentary: Al Massad, Recycle
Cinematography, World Cinema Dramatic: Askild Vik Edvardsen, King of Ping Pong
World Cinema Special Jury Prize, Dramatic: Ernesto Contreras, Blue Eyelids
Special Jury Prize, Documentary: Lisa F. Jackson, Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo
Special Jury Prize, Dramatic, Spirit of Independence: Chusy Haney Jardine, Anywhere USA
Special Jury Prize, Dramatic, Work by an Ensemble Cast: Choke
Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking: (tie) My Olympic Summer and Sikumi (On the Ice)
International Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking: Soft
Honorable Mentions in Short Filmmaking: Aquarium, August 15th, La Corona, Oiran Lyrics, Spider, Suspension, W…
Alfred P. Sloan Prize: Alex Rivera, Sleep Dealer
- Complete coverage of 2008 Sundance Film Festival.