Sundance 2025 | ‘Atropia’ and ‘Twinless’ win high prizes at Sundance Movie Pageant

This picture launched by the Sundance Institute exhibits Alia Shawkat in a scene from “Atropia.”

The struggle satire Atropia, about actors in a army role-playing facility, gained the grand jury prize within the Sundance Movie Pageant’s U.S. dramatic competitors, whereas the Dylan O’Brien film Twinless obtained the coveted viewers award. Juries and programmers for the forty first version of the impartial movie competition introduced the foremost prizewinners Friday in Park Metropolis, Utah.

Different grand jury winners included the documentaries Seeds, about farmers in rural Georgia and Reducing Via the Rocks, concerning the first elected councilwoman in an Iranian village.

Notably, the Indian drama Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears), a couple of metropolis dweller mourning his father within the western Indian countryside, gained the highest prize on the planet cinema competitors. “It’s for my dad,” stated author and director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade. His late father, he stated, was the one who inspired him to pursue filmmaking.

This picture launched by the Sundance Institute exhibits Dylan O’Brien, left, and James Sweeney in a scene from “Twinless,” by James Sweeney, an official number of the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant.
| Picture Credit score:
Greg Cotten

Audiences additionally get to vote on their very own awards, the place James Sweeney’s Twinless, concerning the bromance between two males who meet in a twin bereavement assist group, triumphed within the U.S. dramatic class. O’Brien additionally gained a particular jury award for his performing.

The U.S. documentary viewers award went to André is an Fool, a life-affirming movie about dying of colon most cancers. Different viewers picks have been Prime Minister, about former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and DJ Ahmet, a coming-of-age movie a couple of 15-year-old boy in North Macedonia.

This picture launched by the Sundance Institute exhibits Andre Ricciardi in a scene from “Andre is an Fool,” by Anthony Benna, an official number of the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant.

Mstyslav Chernov, the Oscar-winning Related Press journalist, gained the World Cinema documentary directing award for his newest dispatch from Ukraine, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, a joint manufacturing between the AP and PBS Frontline.

“Right here’s to all documentary administrators who’re risking their lives in Ukraine attempting to inform the tales of people that shield the land that I name residence,” Chernov stated onstage.

Others singled out for steering embrace Geeta Gandbhir for The Excellent Neighbor, a documentary a couple of homicide in Florida advised by means of the usage of police physique digicam footage, and Rashad Frett for Ricky, a drama about life post-incarceration.

The world cinema documentary jury additionally gave particular prizes to Coexistence, My Ass!, a couple of comic who creates a one-woman present concerning the wrestle for equality in Israel and Palestine, and Mr. No person Towards Putin, through which a Russian instructor goes undercover to show what’s occurring in his faculty through the invasion of Ukraine.

“Our programming workforce is so thrilled to have launched these transferring and impactful works to our audiences this Pageant, and we look ahead to following the journeys of every of those proficient artists and their initiatives,” stated competition programming director Kim Yutani.

The Sundance Movie Pageant runs by means of Sunday.