Sundance Doubles Its Pleasure

Forget Hollywood, it was a couple of no-budget, no-name indies that 'danced away with the biggest prizes at America's top film gathering.

The 2006 Sundance Film Festival closed with a double bang this weekend as two films without A-list pedigrees and tackling the not so sexy subject of immigrant life walked off with the top four prizes from both the jury and audience, a Sundance first.

Quinceañera, a drama jointly written and directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer about a 15-year-old Hispanic girl ostracized from her immigrant family in Los Angeles' Echo Park after becoming pregnant and taken in by an elderly uncle and gay cousin, won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the drama category.

"This is a very little film," Quinceañera's Westmoreland said from the podium after accepting his award. "Sundance is like a microscope. It can take something very small and make it very big, and that's what you've done for us."

Meanwhile, Christopher Quinn's God Grew Tired of Us, which follows a handful of Sudan's "Lost Boys"--children forced to flee their homeland on foot to escape the war-torn African country--dominated the documentary slate, also winning the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award.

Saturday's award ceremony not only marked the first double sweep in fest history, but it also paid tribute to the 25th anniversary of Robert Redford's Sundance Institute.

Among the other big winners on the dramatic side: Gela Babluani's French thriller 13 Tzameti, which garnered the World Cinema Jury Prize; Toa Fraser's No. 2, a New Zealand film about a Fijian widow who takes her family on a trip to the South Pacific, which scored the World Cinema Audience Award; and A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which earned the Special Jury Prize for Best Ensemble Performance and Directing Award for first-timer Ditto Montiel. The drama, about a man reflecting back on his childhood growing up in a rough part of Queens in the 1980s, stars Robert Downey Jr., Rosario Dawson, Dianne Wiest and Chazz Palmintieri.

Sundance's five-member jury gave the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award to writer-director Hilary Brougher forStephanie Daley, a drama costarring Tilda Swinton and Amber Tamblyn about a troubled teen who hides her pregnancy and then murders her baby.

Documentaries singled out for honors included: Mexican filmmaker Juan Carlos Rulfo's In the Pit, about construction workers building a freeway in Mexico City, which picked up the World Cinema Documentary Award; Tin Dirdamal's DeNadie, a Mexican doc about a Latin American immigrant's 1,300-mile journey to start a new life in the U.S., which grabbed the World Cinema Audience Award; and Iraq in Fragments, an on-the-ground look at the political situation in Iraq from the perspectives of three different ethnic groups, scored the most prizes in the competition, winning for direction, cinematography (both by James Longley) and editing.

Special Jury Prizes on the drama side went to writer-director So Yong Kim's In Between Days, about a Korean girl who falls for her best friend after emigrating to America; and Julia Kwan's Eve & the Fire Horse, the story of two Chinese siblings in Vancouver trying to shake their family's string of bad luck.

Documentaries receiving Special Jury Prizes were: American Blackout, Ian Inaba's examination of the history of suppression among black voters; TV Junkie, directors Michael Cain and Matt Radecki's tale of a couch potato's search for purpose after sifting through thousands of hours of video; Dear Pyongyang, Japanese helmer Yonghi Yang's portrait of her father's political loyalty to North Korea; and Into Great Silence, Philip Groening's look at the Grand Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps.

The Alfred P. Sloan Prize, which includes a $20,000 check and goes to a film featuring "compelling topics in science," went to the Brazilian drama The House of Sand, directed by Andrucha Waddington and written by Elena Soarez.

Finally, the unofficial top prize for most coveted film belonged to Little Miss Sunshine, a comedy starring Steve Carell of 40-Year-Old Virgin fame, which Fox Searchlight won in a bidding war for $10.5 million.

Other films snapped up for big bucks: Michael Gondry's The Science of Sleep, which Warner Independent Pictures plucked for $6 million; The Night Listener, starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette, which Miramax acquired for $3.35 million; and Right at Your Door, a terrorist thriller snagged by Lions Gate for almost $3 million.