Reports from Sundance
The Sundance Film Festival has officially come to a close, and in Park City, Utah films with a darker edge swept the Festival this Saturday night.

Director Debra Granik’s film “Winter’s Bone” won the grand jury prize U.S. dramatic category and the prestigious Waldo Salt screenwriting award. The film follows the journey of Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), a 17 year old impoverished teen searching for her meth addict father. This thriller is based on Daniel Woodrell’s novel and was set in the woods of the Missouri Ozarks, a truly haunting landscape as the background. Selected highlights of the film can be seen here.

The winner of the U.S. documentary grand jury prize also took advantage of its terrain. Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s “Restrepo” is set in Afghanistan’s dangerous Korengal Valley and examines the American army platoon stationed there. In the midst of reporting for duty and staging their next moves, they are also faced with the task of shooting and killing.
Josh Radnor, star of “How I Met Your Mother” had his directorial debut with the lighter comedy “happythankyoumoreplease.” The film took home the audience prize for U.S. dramatic feature, and connects a series of interwoven stories about a group of 30 somethings trying to adjust to their adult lives.

The festival went through a kind of reinvention this year, with Robert Redford introducing a program to screen festival films simultaneously at theaters around the country, a programming section for low-budget flicks, and the distribution of certain titles via YouTube. But the lineup of consistently stunning films remained.




