Jury Grand Prize, the highest honor of the Sundance Independent Film Festival, was awarded Saturday night to Desirre Akhavan’s “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” on the controversial sex conversion programs for gays, which remain relevant in the USA.
“On behalf of the entire ‘Cameron Post’ team, we want to dedicate (this award) to LGBTQ survivors of sex reassignment therapy,” said Chloë Grace Moretz. “We wanted to do this film simply to highlight the fact that it is illegal to practice sexual conversion therapies in only nine of the 50 states in this country,” she said.
In the category of American documentaries, the grand prize of the jury has awarded “Kailash”, which tells the story of a man’s crusade against child slavery. The Best Achievement Award went to Alexandria Bombach for “On Her Shoulders”, a portrait of a young Yazidie who survives jihadist sex slavery.
The Turkish film “Butterflies” won the jury prize for foreign fiction and “Of Fathers and Sons”, a study on the jihadist radicalization of Syrian filmmaker Talal Derki, was awarded the grand prize of the jury of the foreign documentary .
The Audience Award for American Fiction (second highest in the festival after the Grand Jury Prize) went to Andrew Heckler’s “Burden”.
“The Sentence” won the Audience Award in the American Documentary category.
The Sundance Festival unveils each year a few nuggets in the Oscar race, as last year’s “Get Out” by Jordan Peele. The film, which was shown out of competition during a midnight session, earned four Oscar nominations, as did Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name”, also presented last year at Sundance.
