Immigrant's tale, Canadian actress take top awards at Sundance

Last Updated: Sunday, January 28, 2007 | 12:45 PM ET

CBC Arts

A saga about an illegal immigrant's search for his father in America, Padre Nuestro, and Canadian actress Tamara Podemski emerged as winners at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

Padre Nuestro, directed by Christopher Zalla, won the Grand Jury Prize for best drama. Jury members for the prize included director Catherine Hardwicke and Canadian Sarah Polley, whose movie Away From Her screened at the festival.

Canadian Tamara Podemski accepts the dramatic jury special acting prize for her performance in Four Sheets to the Wind at the Sundance Film Festival Awards Saturday night.
(Carolyn Kaster/ Associated Press)

Zalla said he tried to paint a picture of New York as a city of immigrants.

"When we filmed the movie, we talked to a lot of people crossing the [borders], and they were just families — families coming to feed themselves and reunite with their family," Zalla said at the awards gala on Saturday night in Park City, Utah.

Another Latin American story, this time about government corruption and kidnapping in Brazil, Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), earned the prize for top U.S. documentary, while the film's cinematographer, Heloisa Passos, was also honoured.

Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore called it a "landmark year" for the festival, which celebrates independent films.

"For so many different reasons, this work is exceptional in terms of how much of it will get into the marketplace, and the range of issues and maturity of the filmmakers," Gilmore said.

Canadian nabs acting prize

Two special acting prizes were given out. Canadian actor and singer Tamara Podemski was honoured for her "fully realized physical and emotional turn" as an American Indian whose carefree lifestyle leads her to the brink of tragedy in Four Sheets to the Wind.

Jess Weixler was also singled out, for a "jaw-dropping performance" as a young woman who has lethal genital mutation, in the horror comedy Teeth.

Podemski, born and raised in Toronto, has appeared in several television series such as Dance Me Outside, The Rez and Ready or Not as well as being an original Canadian cast member of the musical Rent.

Meanwhile, the audience drama award went to Grace Is Gone, starring John Cusack as a father who takes his daughters on a road trip after finding out their Army sergeant mother has been killed in Iraq. 

The film also garnered a screenwriting award for director James C. Strouse.

Afghan female politician story wins award

The Sundance audience voted Hear and Now as its favourite documentary. The film, directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky, tells the personal story of her deaf parents and their radical decision to undergo cochlear implant surgery, giving them the ability to hear.

The jury prize for world cinema was handed to the Israeli film Sweet Mud, director Dror Shaul's story of a boy coping with his mother's mental illness on a kibbutz in the 1970s.

Coming in at the top of the world documentary category was Danish film Enemies of Happiness, directed by Eva Mulvad and Anja Al Erhayem. The directors examined how an Afghan woman landed a historic victory in her country's 2005 parliamentary election.

Other winners at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival include:

• Audience Award, World Cinema: Once, directed by John Carney.
• Audience Award, World Documentary: In the Shadow of the Moon, directed by David Sington.
• Directing, U.S. drama: Jeffrey Blitz, Rocket Science.
• Directing, U.S. documentary: Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, War/Dance.
• Cinematography, U.S. drama: Benoit Debie, Joshua.
• Special jury prize, world-cinema dramatic competition: The Legacy, directed by Géla Babluani and Temur Babluani.
• Special jury prize, world-cinema documentary competition: Hot House, directed by Shimon Dotan.