Questlove’s Summer of Soul wins at Sundance 2021

Written by Stephanie Goodman
A documentary concerning the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, usually known as the Black Woodstock, and a characteristic a few listening to daughter in a deaf household took high honors Tuesday night time on the first digital version of the Sundance Film Festival.
In the nonfiction class, each the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award went to Summer of Soul, a potent mixture of never-before-seen live performance footage and historical past lesson by first-time filmmaker Ahmir Thompson, higher often known as Questlove.
Among dramatic options, each the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award went to Coda, an acronym for “child of deaf adults.” Sian Heder (Tallulah) wrote and directed the crowd-pleasing story starring Emilia Jones as a teen who serves as an interpreter for her working-class household in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Additionally, Heder received the directing award for American options, and the movie received a particular honor for its performing ensemble.
In the world-cinema characteristic competitors, Hive, which follows the spouse of a soldier lacking within the Kosovo warfare, received each the grand jury and viewers prizes in addition to the directing award for its filmmaker, Blerta Basholli. Among world-cinema documentaries, Flee, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated take a look at an Afghan refugee in Denmark, received the grand jury prize. The Audience Award went to Writing With Fire, from Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, about India’s solely newspaper run by Dalit ladies.
Other directing winners included, for American documentaries, Natalia Almada, whose Users examines the human prices of know-how, and on the planet cinema documentary class, Hogir Hirori for Sabaya, about an effort to save lots of Yazidi ladies and ladies held captive by ISIS.

Because of the pandemic, this version of the pageant, which formally ends Wednesday, was pared again and carried out largely on-line. For a whole record of winners, see sundance.org.