"Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire" scored a rare triple victory Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival, winning both the grand jury prize and the audience award for drama as well as a special jury prize for acting.
Directed by Lee Daniels, best known for producing the Oscar-winning "Monster's Ball," and adapted by Damien Pearl from the 1997 novel, "Push" tells the raw, nightmarish story of a 16-year-old pregnant girl who tries to escape from the domination of her terrifying mother (played by Mo'Nique, who won that acting prize) and make something of her life.
Taking the U.S. documentary grand jury prize at the Park City, Utah, festival was Ondi Timoner's "We Live in Public," about a renegade artist who did just that. The world documentary prize went to Kim Longinotto's "Rough Aunties," about a South African organization that works with sexually abused children.
Havana Marking's "Afghan Star," a look at an "American Idol"-type TV program in Kabul, was the only documentary to win two prizes, taking both the world documentary audience award and the world documentary directing nod.
Four other films, all dramas, took home a pair of prizes apiece, starting with Lone Scherfig's captivating "An Education," about a British high school girl meeting an older man, which earned both the world drama audience award and the world drama cinematography award for John De Borman. Two other world drama films received two awards apiece, including Sebastian Silva's "The Maid," from Chile, which received the world dramatic prize and a special world drama jury prize for acting for star Catalina Saavedra. The other world double winner was Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Five Minutes of Heaven," starring Liam Neeson and James Nesbit. Screenwriter Guy Hibbert constructed an intense narrative about what might have transpired if two people, involved in different ways with a murder that actually took place in Northern Ireland in 1975, met decades after the event. Hirschbiegel won the world drama directing award, Hibbert the world drama screenwriting nod.
The only film in the general dramatic competition to win two awards was writer-director Cary Joji Fukunaga's "Sin Nombre," about the intersecting lives of a Guatemalan teen fleeing to the U.S. and a Mexican gang member. Already set for distribution by Focus Features, the film won the dramatic directing award and the excellence in cinematography award for Adriano Goldman.
