The Sundance Film Festival today announced its Jury and Audience Award winners for the 2023 festival. The big winners to take home the prizes included Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version which was the recipient of both the Audience Award and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in U.S. Dramatic Competition. The festival has showcased 111 feature films, and 64 short films.
Written, directed and produced by Keshavarz , The Persian Version sees a large Iranian-American family come together as the patriarch of their clan undergoes surgery for a heart transplant, before a secret is uncovered that sends an estranged duo of mother and daughter into an emotional and cathartic exploration of the past.
In the same section, A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One was awarded the prestigious Grand Jury Prize. The film, starring Teyana Taylor and Josiah Cross, sees audiences follow the journey of the wayward spirit Inez, who marches to the beat of her own drum, and the aftermath of her decision to kidnap Terry, a 6-year-old who is stuck in the New York City foster care system, believing it is a final necessary crime on her long journey to what she feels will be her ultimate redemption.
