2016 Sundance Film Festival Winners: The Birth of a Nation Wins Top Two Prizes

Nate Parker’s directorial debut, The Birth of a Nation, came out on top at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival awards winning the two top prizes. This year marks only the fourth time a film has won the top categories – the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize – at Sundance. Interestingly enough though, this has happened for four years in a row. The film joins Fruitvale Station (2013), Whiplash (2014) and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015). For two of those films (Fruitvale Station and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) it resulted in zero Oscar attention but Whiplash ended up with three Academy Award wins. The Birth of a Nation has quite a bit of a head start on the 2017 Oscar race now after the ferocious bidding war on the film ended up with Fox Searchlight (the distributor of the last two Best Picture winners) buying the film for a record-setting $17.5m. As we are in the midst of the #OscarsSoWhite narrative for a second year in a row, all eyes will be on this film all year long.

Melanie Lynskey and Craig Robinson picked up jury prizes for acting and the Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse movie Swiss Army Man won the Directing award for its dual Daniel directors Scheinert and Kwan.

The FULL list of winners for the 2016 Sundance Film Festival Awards:

U.S. DRAMATIC

Audience Award
The Birth Of A Nation
Nate Parker

Grand Jury Prize
The Birth Of A Nation
Nate Parker

Directing
Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan
Swiss Army Man

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award
Chad Hartigan
Morris From America

Special Jury Award – Individual Performance
Melanie Lynskey
The Intervention

Special Jury Award – Individual Performance
Craig Robinson
Morris from America

Special Jury Award – Breakthrough Performance
Joe Seo
Spa Night

Special Jury Award
As You Are
Miles Joris-Peyrafitte

U.S. DOCUMENTARY

Grand Jury Prize
Weiner
Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman

Audience Award
Jim: The James Foley Story
Brian Oakes

Directing
Roger Ross Williams
Life, Animated

Special Jury Award – Vérité Filmmaking
The Bad Kids
Keith Fulton, Lou Pepe

Special Jury Award – Writing
Kate Plays Christine
Robert Greene

Special Jury Award – Social Impact Filmmaking
Trapped
Dawn Porter

NEXT Audience Award
First Girl I Loved
Kerem Sanga

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC

Audience Award
Between Sea and Land / Colombia
Directors: Manolo Cruz, Carlos del Castillo

Sand StormGrand Jury Prize
Sand Storm / Israel
Director: Elite Zexer

Directing Award
Belgica / Belgium-France-Netherlands
Felix van Groeningen

Special Jury Award – Unique Vision and Design
The Lure / Poland
Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska

Special Jury Award – Screenwriting
Mi Amiga Del Parque / Argentina-Uruguay
Screenwriters: Inés Bortagaray, Ana Katz

Special Jury Award – Acting
Vicky Hernandéz, Manolo Cruz
Between Sea and Land / Colombia

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY

Grand Jury Prize
Sonita / Germany-Iran-Swizerland
Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami

Directing
All These Sleepless Nights / Poland
Michal Marczak

Special Jury Award – Best Editing
We Are X / UK-U.S.-Japan
Editors: Mako Kamitsuna, John Maringouin

Special Jury Award – Best Cinematography
The Land Of The Enlightened / Belgium
DP: Pieter-Jan De Pue

Special Jury Award – Best Debut Feature
When Two Worlds Collide / Peru
Directors: Mathew Orzel, Heidi Brandenburg

Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize
Embrace of the Serpent
Directed by Ciro Guerra

SHORT FILM PRIZES

Short Film Grand Jury Prize
Thunder Road / U.S.
Director and screenwriter: Jim Cummings

Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction
The Procedure / U.S.
Director and screenwriter: Calvin Lee Reeder

Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction
Maman(s) / France
Director and screenwriter: Maïmouna Doucouré

Short Film Jury Award: Non-fiction
Bacon & God’s Wrath / Canada
Director: Sol Friedman

Short Film Jury Award: Animation
Edmond / UK
Director and screenwriter: Nina Gantz

Short Film Special Jury Award for Outstanding Performance
Grace Glowicki
Her Friend Adam

Short Film Special Jury Award for Best Direction
Peacock / Czech Republic
Director: Ondrej Hudecek, Screenwriters: Jan Smutny, Ondrej Hudecek

• Author
• Recent Posts

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), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) 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.

Latest posts by Erik Anderson (see all)

• 2025 Oscar Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTOR (November) - November 21, 2024
• 2025 Oscars: Eligibility Lists for Animated Feature, Documentary Feature and International Feature Film for the 97th Academy Awards - November 21, 2024
• Nava Mau, Sean Wang Among 2024 BAFTA Breakthroughs Championing New ‘Must-Watch’ Creatives - November 21, 2024