Sunday, January 28, 2007

Sundance 2007 -- Grace and Others


The winners of the Sundance Film Festival 2007 were announced, and there are a number of films that were recognized as great films that sound very interesting and full of potential.

The film that seems the most interesting to me from Sundance this year is the winner of the Audience Award in the Dramatic film catagory, called Grace is Gone. Grace is Gone stars John Cusack as a father who's wife dies in Iraq, and is forced to tell his daughters the news.

The Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic competition went up Padre Nuestro, which in way reminds me of the film Maria Full of Grace. This film tells the story of a criminal from Mexico fleeing his past and becomes an illegal immigrant to New York City who meets up with a man who's looking for his father.

The top documentary winners both sound very different but both also seem interesting. The grand jury was won by Mandra Bella (Sand in the Desert) is out unique corruption in Brazil, and appears to mainly deal with a politician who uses a frog farm as a way to launder huge amounts of money.

The audience winner is a film called Hear and Now about director Irene Brodsky's deaf parents who decide to get cochlear implant surgery which will allow them to hear.

Obviously, some Sundance winners will get major attention on theaterical releases from critics and awards by the end of next year, and who know's what we'll see next year (Last year's big winner QuinceaƱera hardly made a splash this year) but Hear and Now sounds very "capturing the friedman-esque"). Personally I would love to see John Cusack get some award recognition if Grace is Gone lives up to what sounds like a potentially excellent film.

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