Questlove’s Summer of Soul wins at Sundance 2021

Written by Stephanie Goodman

A documentary concerning the 1969 Harlem Cultural Pageant, usually known as the Black Woodstock, and a function a few listening to daughter in a deaf household took prime honors Tuesday night time on the first digital version of the Sundance Movie Pageant.

Within the nonfiction class, each the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and the Viewers Award went to Summer season of Soul, a potent mixture of never-before-seen live performance footage and historical past lesson by first-time filmmaker Ahmir Thompson, higher generally known as Questlove.

Amongst dramatic options, each the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and Viewers 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 an adolescent who serves as an interpreter for her working-class household in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Moreover, Heder gained the directing award for American options, and the movie gained a particular honor for its performing ensemble.

On this planet-cinema function competitors, Hive, which follows the spouse of a soldier lacking within the Kosovo warfare, gained each the grand jury and viewers prizes in addition to the directing award for its filmmaker, Blerta Basholli. Amongst world-cinema documentaries, Flee, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated have a look at an Afghan refugee in Denmark, gained the grand jury prize. The Viewers Award went to Writing With Hearth, from Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, about India’s solely newspaper run by Dalit girls.

Different directing winners included, for American documentaries, Natalia Almada, whose Customers examines the human prices of know-how, and on the planet cinema documentary class, Hogir Hirori for Sabaya, about an effort to avoid wasting Yazidi girls and ladies held captive by ISIS.

Due to the pandemic, this version of the pageant, which formally ends Wednesday, was pared again and performed largely on-line. For an entire listing of winners, see sundance.org.