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2014 Sundance Film Festival Announces Short Film Awards : Of God and Dogs Wins Short Film Grand Jury Prize

Fueled by artistic expression and limited only by their runtime, short films transcend traditional storytelling. They are a significant and popular way artists can connect with audiences. From documentary to animation, narrative to experimental, the abbreviated form is no longer just for the novice. Shorts have and will continue to be an important part of cinema, storytelling, and culture. The Sundance Film Festival has always been proud to treat short films with the highest regard and to give a home to new (and old) projects for audiences to discover and celebrate.

Sundance Institute this evening announced the jury prizes and honorable mentions in short filmmaking at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. The awards were presented at a ceremony in Park City, Utah.
 

This year's Short Film program is comprised of 66 short films selected from a record 8,161 submissions. The Short Film jurors are: Vernon Chatman, producer, writer, director and voice actor; filmmaker/actor Joshua Leonard; and Ania Trzebiatowska, artistic director of the Off Plus Camera International Festival of Independent Cinema, based in Krakow, Poland.
 

The Short Film program is presented by YouTube. Fifteen short films from the 2014 Festival are featured on the Festival’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/sff.
 

Short film award recipients will also be honored at the Festival’s feature film Awards Ceremony, hosted by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, on Saturday, January 25 at 6:00 p.m. MT and live-streamed at www.youtube.com/sff.
 

The 2014 Sundance Film Festival runs through January 26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. A complete list of films and events is available at www.sundance.org/festival.
 

The Short Film Grand Jury Prize was awarded to:
 

Of God and Dogs / Syrian Arab Republic (Director: Abounaddara Collective) — A young, free Syrian soldier confesses to killing a man he knew was innocent. He promises to take vengeance on the God who led him to commit the murder.
 

The Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction was presented to:

Gregory Go Boom / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Janicza Bravo) — A paraplegic man leaves home to be on his own.
 

The Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction was presented to:

The Cut / Canada (Director and screenwriter: Geneviève Dulude-Decelles) — The Cut tells the story of a father and a daughter, whose relationship fluctuates between proximity and detachment, at the moment of a haircut.
 

The Short Film Jury Award: Non-fiction was presented to:

I Think This Is the Closest to How the Footage Looked / Israel (Directors: Yuval Hameiri, Michal Vaknin) — A man with poor means recreates a lost memory of the last day with his mom. Objects come to life in a desperate struggle to produce a single moment that is gone.
 

The Short Film Jury Award: Animation was presented to:

Yearbook / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Bernardo Britto) — A man is hired to compile the definitive history of human existence before the planet blows up.
 

A Short Film Special Jury Award for Unique Vision was presented to:

Rat Pack Rat / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Todd Rohal) — A Sammy Davis Jr. impersonator, hired to visit a loyal Rat Pack fan, finds himself performing the last rites at the boy's bedside.
 

A Short Film Special Jury Award for Non-fiction was presented to:

Love. Love. Love. / Russia (Director: Sandhya Daisy Sundaram) — Every year, through the endless winters, her love takes new shapes and forms.
 

A Short Film Special Jury Award for Direction and Ensemble Acting was presented to:

Burger / United Kingdom, Norway (Director and screenwriter: Magnus Mork) — It's late night in a burger bar in Wales...

 

The Sundance Film Festival®

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2014, the Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most groundbreaking films of the past three decades, including Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Little Miss Sunshine, An Education, sex, lies, and videotape, Reservoir Dogs, The Cove, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious, and Napoleon Dynamite, and through its New Frontier initiative, has showcased the cinematic works of media artists including Isaac Julien, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Matthew Barney. The Festival is a program of the non-profit Sundance Institute®. 2014 Festival sponsors to date include: Presenting Sponsors – HP, Acura, Sundance Channel and Chase Sapphire Preferred®; Leadership Sponsors – Airbnb, DIRECTV, Entertainment Weekly, LensCrafters, Southwest Airlines, Sprint and YouTube; Sustaining Sponsors – Adobe, Canada Goose, Canon U.S.A., Inc., Brita® FilterForGood®, in partnership with Nalgene®, Hilton HHonors and Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Ketel One Vodka, L'Oréal Paris, MorningStar Farms®, Omnicom, Quaker Oats Company, Stella Artois® and Time Warner Inc. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development, and the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations helps offset the Festival’s costs and sustain the Institute's year-round programs for independent film and theatre artists. www.sundance.org/festival

Sundance Institute

Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a global, nonprofit cultural organization dedicated to nurturing artistic expression in film and theater, and to supporting intercultural dialogue between artists and audiences. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to unite, inform and inspire, regardless of geo-political, social, religious or cultural differences. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival and its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Sin Nombre, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.