2025 Sundance Film Festival Winners: ‘Atropia,’ ‘Twinless,’ Sorry, Baby’ Earn Top Awards

Today, the 2025 Sundance Film Festival awards were presented at a ceremony for the jury and audience award–winning films at The Ray Theatre in Park City, where Atropia, Twinless, Plainclothes and Sorry, Baby earned top U.S. Dramatic and Audience Award honors while Cactus Pears and Two Women earned wins in World Cinema and Seeds, Cutting Through Rocks and Nobody Against Mr. Putin were among the documentary winners.

Grand Jury Prizes went to Atropia (U.S. Dramatic Competition), Seeds (U.S. Documentary Competition), Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears)(World Cinema Dramatic Competition), and Cutting Through Rocks (World Cinema Documentary Competition). The NEXT Innovator Award presented by Adobe was given to Zodiac Killer Project.

Special Jury Prizes for performance went to the cast of Plainclothes for ensemble and Dylan O’Brien for his dual performance in Twinless. Both films are currently seeking distribution.

The Waldo Salt Award for Screenwriting went to Eva Victor for her debut film Sorry, Baby. Last year, writer/actor/director Jesse Eisenberg won the award for A Real Pain, which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Audience awards for films in competition were presented by Acura to Twinless (U.S. Dramatic Competition) and  André is an Idiot(U.S. Documentary Competition) and presented by United Airlines to DJ Ahmet (World Cinema Dramatic Competition) and Prime Minister (World Cinema Documentary Competition). East of Wall won the audience award for NEXT presented by Adobe. Awards for the Short Film Program Presented by Vimeo were announced at a ceremony on January 28 at The Park in Park City, Utah.

All feature award-winning films are available online nationwide now through February 2. Select award-winning films will screen in person for ticketholders and passholders. Tickets can be purchased at festival.sundance.org/tickets.

“We congratulate all of our filmmakers and award winners on a successful 2025 Sundance Film Festival and thank them for the stories they shared with our audiences,” said Amanda Kelso, Acting CEO, Sundance Institute. “These works spoke to our commitment to fostering empathy, understanding, and a more vibrant, inclusive society through storytelling, and it was an honor to celebrate them together as a community.”

“Arriving at our Awards Ceremony after seven days of connection and discovery is especially rewarding this year. We are thrilled to honor these filmmakers for their inventiveness, generosity, and for the valuable conversations, moments of levity, and deep insights their work has offered,” said Eugene Hernandez, Director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programming. “We share our gratitude with the State of Utah, audiences, staff, volunteers, and everyone who makes the Sundance Film Festival possible.”

“We have such admiration and respect for all of the films in this year’s program, and we want to congratulate everyone who had a hand in creating the works being honored at our Awards Ceremony today,” added Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming. “Our programming team is so thrilled to have introduced these moving and impactful works to our audiences this Festival, and we look forward to following the journeys of each of these talented artists and their projects.”

News during the festival that organizers were close to landing on where Sundance would move to beginning in 2027, where Salt Lake City, Cincinnati and Boulder are among the finalists, signs and rumor began looking to Boulder, Colorado, which would give the state its second major festival after Telluride, which is held over Labor Day weekend and will be celebrating its 52nd year later this summer. No final decision has been made yet.

The awards ceremony honored the winning projects two days before the conclusion of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where 94 feature-length and episodic works and 57 short films — curated from a total 15,775 submissions — have screened to audiences in Park City, Salt Lake City, and online.

Last year, top awards went to In the Summers, A Real Pain and Porcelain War, the latter two earning Academy Award nominations earlier this month in acting and writing, and documentary feature, respectively.

This year’s U.S. dramatic jury consisted director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard), actor Arian Moayed (HBO’s Succession) and writer/director Celine Song (Past Lives). Steven Bognar, Vinnie Malhotra, and Marcia Smith presided over the domestic documentary section. Actor Elijah Wood is the sole juror for the Next section, spotlighting emerging filmmakers.

Here is the complete list of winners.

US Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic
Atropia

Directing Award: US Dramatic
Rashad Frett, Ricky

US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting
Dylan O’Brien, Twinless

US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast
Plainclothes – om Blyth, Russell Tovey, Maria Dizzia, Christian Cooke, Gabe Fazio, Amy Forsyth

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: US Dramatic
Eva Victor, Sorry, Baby

Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic
Twinless

Audience Award: U.S. Documentary
André is an Idiot

Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic
DJ Ahmet

U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary
Seeds, Brittany Shyne

Directing Award: U.S. Documentary
Geeta Gandbhir, The Perfect Neighbor

Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award: U.S. Documentary
Parker Laramie, André is an Idiot

World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic
Sabar Bonda, Cactus Pears

World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Writing
Two Women, Chloé Robichaud and Catherine Léger

World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision
Georgi M. Unkovski, DJ Ahmet

World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary
Cutting Through Rocks

World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award
Mr. Nobody Against Putin

World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression
Coexistence, My Ass!

Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary
Mstyslav Chernov, 2000 Meters to Andriivka

Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary
Prime Minister

Next: Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast
Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) – Juan Collado, Destiny Checo, Yohanna Florentino, Nathaly Navarro

Next: Innovator Award
Zodiac Killer Project

Audience Award: Next
East of Wall

Short Film Grand Jury Prize
The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, Theo Panagopoulos

Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction
Trokas Duras. Jazmin Garcia

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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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