Fruitvale captures hearts and hardware at Sundance

PARK CITY, UTAH — Fruitvale, the true story of an inner city kid living in the Oakland, Calif.area, won most of the major hardware, including the U.S Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Audience Award, as the 2013 Sundance Film Festival wrapped with its awards gala Saturday night.

Fruitvale is based on the true story of Oscar Grant, who was 22 when he was shot and killed in a public transit station in Oakland.

“I thought this was about humanity and how we treat each other,” said first-time director Ryan Coogler, as he accepted the night’s final prize. With his voice breaking, the director said he wanted to honour the central character and his hometown, where “Oscar slept, loved, lived and survived for 22 years.”

It was a touching moment in a speedy ceremony hosted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The big winner on the documentary side of the U.S. competition was Blood Brother, Steve Hoover’s chronicle of a young man who heads to India as a disillusioned tourist and finds a group of young children living with HIV/ AIDS.

“I could cry in front of you guys. Man, it is so encouraging for the kids. So awesome,” Hoover said. “Their lives are so challenging; they die and no one remembers their name.”

In a year marked by themes of social revolution, this year’s Sundance Film Festival also awarded major hardware to movies about the Egyptian uprising (The Square), the income gap in the United States (Inequality for All), and outspoken, but incarcerated Russian rockers Pussy Riot (A Punk Prayer).

Women were certainly a buzz topic at this year’s festival who — in an unprecedented showing — represented 50 per cent of the directing pool at this year’s festival.

Jill Soloway, who walked away with the U.S. dramatic directing award for her film Afternoon Delight, offered a shout-out to her fellow female directors: “We all crossed the street together and put ourselves out there,” she said.

Social issues always stand front and centre at Sundance, the festival founded by Robert Redford in 1981 as a way to showcase independent cinema and offer an alternative to Hollywood filmmaking.