Sundance closes with nods to war and family

By Bob Tourtellotte

PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) - The Sundance Film Festival drew to a close on Sunday with organisers calling it a landmark year for independent filmmakers who added breadth and depth to movies dealing with global issues, war and family.

"Padre Nuestro" on Saturday won the jury prize for best film drama by a U.S. filmmaker with a tale of a young illegal immigrant from Mexico who travels to New York seeking a father he never knew.

"Manda Bala" earned the jury award for best U.S. documentary with a tale of crime and corruption in Brazil.

"Grace is Gone," starring John Cusack as a father of two whose wife dies in Iraq, picked up the audience trophy for favourite drama and a writing award for filmmaker James Strouse. "Grace" also was among the movies whose distribution rights were sold in one of the most active markets in years at Sundance.

"For so many different reasons, this work is exceptional in terms of how much of it will get into the marketplace, and the range of issues and maturity of the filmmakers," said festival director Geoffrey Gilmore, who hailed 2007 as a "landmark year."

Sundance, which is backed by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, is the top U.S. gathering for movies made outside Hollywood’s mainstream studios, and each year festival favourites top .....continued below

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With wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and African nations making headlines, "indie" filmmakers at the 2007 edition were looking outward for their subject matter as opposed to the insular and more personal movies that often played here in the 1990s.

THE INDIE FAMILY

Yet, even as that world view seemed to dominate Sundance 2007, many festival movies were grounded in the idea that family is where people seek safety in troubled times.

"Padre Nuestro" and "Grace" were both examples of tales of family bonds set against issues of illegal immigration and death during wartime, respectively.

But those movies were not the only ones. The audience award for best documentary went to "Hear and Now," in which filmmaker Irene Taylor Brodsky detailed a year in the life of her deaf parents who decided to undergo surgery so they could hear.

Sundance juries also handed out honours for international movies, and the World Cinema drama prize went to Israeli movie "Sweet Mud," about a boy dealing with his mentally ill mother on a kibbutz in the 1970s.

Denmark’s "Enemies of Happiness," which details the life of an Afghani woman politician, earned the World Cinema jury prize for best documentary, and a special jury prize went to non-fiction film "No End in Sight," about U.S. policy mistakes in the Iraq war.

Like many award winners at Sundance, "No End" director Charles Ferguson took the opportunity to address the U.S.-led war in Iraq with an eye towards the future, not the past.

"It might be too late for Iraq, but I hope it isn’t too late for this country to conduct itself differently in the future," he said.

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