2015 SUNDANCE Film Festival Winners: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and More

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From left; RJ Cyler, Olivia Cooke and Thomas Mann from the Sundance winner Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

The winners were announced this weekend for the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and after 10 days of snow and cinema the big winners of the fest included Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a cancer comedy-drama with Thomas Mann and Connie Britton, which won both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award. This is the third year in a row this has happened; Fruitvale Station and Whiplash won both of these with the latter going on to earning multiple Oscar nominations. Earl was picked up by Fox Searchlight, which has been having a very successful couple of years with both box office, critical hits and the Oscars. They have the two highest nomination getters this year in Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel as well as double acting nominations for Wild. Fox Searchlight also picked up the out of competition Brooklyn, from writer Nick Hornsby (About a Boy) and starring Saoirse Ronan, a romantic drama set in 1950s Ireland.

Other winners include Dope, a hip-hop coming of age comedy starring Zoë Kravitz and set for a summer release by Open Road and Diary of a Teenage Girl, about a teen artist in 1970s San Francisco. That film stars Kristen Wiig, Christopher Meloni and newcomer Bel Powley and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics.

On the World Cinema side, the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic went to Slow West and the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting went to Regina Case and Camila Mardila for The Second Mother.

The full list of winners:

U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Documentary: The Wolfpack

U.S. Dramatic Directing Award: Robert Eggers for The Witch

Directing Award for U.S. Documentary: Matthew Heineman for Cartel Land

U.S. Dramatic Screenwriting Award: The Stanford Prison Experiment

U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematography: Diary of a Teenage Girl

U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Excellence in Editing: Lee Haugen for Dope

U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision: Advantageous

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Social Impact: 3 1/2 Minutes

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Verite Filmmaking: Western

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Breakout First Feature: (T)error

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Cartel Land

U.S. Dramatic Audience Award: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

U.S. Documentary Audience Award: Meru

World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic: Slow West

World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award: Umrika

World Cinema Documentary Audience Award: Dark Horse

Next Audience Award: James White

World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award: Alante Kavaite for The Summer of Sangaile

World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematography: Germain McKicking for Partisan

World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting: Jack Reynor for Glassland

World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting: Regina Case and Camila Mardila for The Second Mother

World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize: The Russian Woodpecker

World Cinema Documentary Directing Award: Kim Longinotto for Dreamcatcher

World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing: How to Change the World

World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Impact: Pervert Park

World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Unparalleled Access: The Chinese Mayor

Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013. He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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