‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post,’ ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’ win 2018 Sundance Film Festival Awards

Erik Anderson January 27, 2018

The future is female for the 2018 Sundance Film winners as the top top awards went to women film makers.

Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post won the Grand Jury Prize. It tells the story a girl forced into gay conversion therapy by her conservative guardians, who are also her aunt and uncle. The directing prize went to Sara Colangelo for The Kindergarten Teacher starring Maggie Gyllenhaal about a teacher who becomes obsessed with a student she believes is a child prodigy. The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award went to Christina Choe for Nancy, starring Andrea Riseborough, Steve Buscemi and Ann Dowd about a woman who believes she was kidnapped as a child.

Last year’s fest brought us The Big Sick, Call Me By Your Name, Get Out and Mudbound. Will any of this year’s winners find a path to Oscar glory?

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize: “The Miseducation of Cameron Post”

Audience Award: “Burden”

Directing: Sara Colangelo, “The Kindergarten Teacher”

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: Christina Choe, “Nancy”

Special Jury Award for Outstanding First Feature: Reinaldo Marcus Green, “Monsters and Men”

Special Jury Award for Excellence in Filmmaking: “I Think We’re Alone Now”

Special Jury Award for Acting: Benjamin Dickey, “Blaze”

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize: “Kailash”

Directing: Alexandria Bombach, “On Her Shoulders”

Audience Award: “The Sentence”

Special Jury Award for Social Impact: “Crime + Punishment”

Special Jury Award for Creative Vision: “Hale County This Morning, This Evening”

Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking: “Minding the Gap”

Special Jury Award for Storytelling: “Three Identical Strangers”

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize: “Butterflies”

Audience Award: “The Guilty”

Directing Award: Ísold Uggadóttir, “And Breathe Normally”

Special Jury Award for Acting: Valeria Bertucecelli, “The Queen of Fear,”

Special Jury Award for Screenwriting: Julio Chavezmontes & Sebastián Hofmann, “Time Share”

Special Jury Award for Ensemble Acting: “Dead Pigs”

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize: “Of Fathers and Sons”

Audience Award: “This Is Home”

Directing Award: Sandi Tan, “Shirkers”

Special Jury Award: Steven Loveridge, “Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.”

Special Jury Award for Cinematography: Maxim Arbugaev, Peter Indergand “Genesis 2.0”

Special Jury Award for Editing: Maxim Pozdorovkin & Matvey Kulakov, “Our New President”

OTHER AWARDS

NEXT Audience Award: “Search”

NEXT Innovator Award: “Night Comes On” AND “We the Animals”

Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize: “Search”

Sundance Institute NHK Award: Remi Weekes, “His House”

Sundance Institute/Amazon Studios Producers Awards: Katy Chevingy & Marilyn Ness (“Dark Money”) AND Sev Ohanian (“Search”)

Sundance Open Borders Fellowship Presented by Netflix: Talal Derki (“Of Fathers and Sons”) AND Chaitanya Tamhane AND Tatiana Huezo (“Night on Fire”)

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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), 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.