PARK CITY — Sundance Film Festival juries and audiences rarely see eye-to-eye on movies. Saturday night, however, a Latino coming-of-age tale and a documentary about Sudanese "lost boys" clearly won the hearts and minds of both, taking home top honors from the 2006 festival in the process.
"Quinceanera," Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer's drama about disaffected Latino teens in Los Angeles, won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for the best dramatic feature. And "God Grew Tired of Us," Christopher Quinn's profile of three Sudanese refugees now living in the United States, won both those awards in its category, best documentary feature.
Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore, who emceed the awards program, noted that this was the first time in the festival's history that a dramatic feature and a documentary both swept their respective categories. He attributed the wins to the way the films "deal sensitively with the timely and complex issues and cultural assimilation and community.
"Clearly, these compelling stories, along with the quality of filmmaking, have resonated with audiences and jury members alike," he said.
Other multiple-awards winner include filmmaker James Longley, who scored both the documentary-directing award and the documentary cinematography award for "Iraq in Fragments." And he shared the documentary editing award with with his co-editors, Billy McMillin and Fiona Otway.
Tom Richmond, who shot the thriller "Right at Your Door," won the dramatic cinematography award.
Dito Montiel's drama "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" won twice as well — receiving both the dramatic-directing award and a Special Jury Prize for Best Ensemble Cast, given to Robert Downey Jr., Shia LaBeouf, Rosario Dawson, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest and Channing Tatum.
World Cinema Jury Prizes went to the Mexican documentary "In the Pit" and the French drama "13 Tzameti."
Winners of Audience Awards in those categories were the New Zealand drama "No. 2" and the Mexican documentary "De Nadie," while Hilary Brougher, the writer-director of "Stephanie Daley," won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for outstanding achievement in writing.
The Brazilian drama "The House of Sand" won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, an award designed to "increase the visibility of outstanding independent films on science and technology," which includes a $20,000 cash award.
And in the American dramatic competition, a Special Jury Prize also went to "In Between Days" for its "independent vision."
Recipients of Special Jury Prizes in the documentary competition were "American Blackout" and "TV Junkie." In world cinema, the documentaries "Into Great Silence" and "Dear Pyongyang" and the drama "Eve & The Firehorse" received similar honors.
Highlights from the Sundance awards event, which was held at the Park City Racquet Club, were broadcast by tape delayed Saturday night on the Sundance Channel, which is available to some pay-cable and satellite subscribers.
Audience awards were voted on by those attending the 10-day festival, and jury awards were determined by five separate panels that included actor Terrence Howard ("Hustle & Flow"), Academy Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker Alexander Payne ("Sideways") and Oscar-winning documentarian Zana Briski ("Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red-Light Kids").
Special programs of some of the award-winning films are scheduled throughout today in Park City. And "Best of Festival" programs will offer free screenings of award-winning films on Monday, again in Park City, as well as Salt Lake City and the Sundance Resort. Ogden will host similar screenings Jan. 31.
Titles and show times had not been announced at press time but were to be posted early today on the festival Web site: www.sundance.org.
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com