Oscar hopeful Beasts of the Southern Wild and Artifact, actor Jared Leto’s documentary — he’s credited as Bartholomew Cubbins — about his band 30 Seconds to Mars, are among the five films that have made it to the final round of IFP’s Gotham Independent Film Audience Award contest. Beasts, which was directed by Benh Zeitlin, turns out to be the only non-documentary nominated: The other three contenders include Kirby Dick’s Invisible War, about rape in the military; Burn, Brenna Sanchez and Tom Putnam’s documentary about Detroit firefighters, and Jonathan Kalafer’s Once in a Lullaby: The PS 22 Chorus Story, which tells the story of how the fifth-grade chorus at a Staten Island public school came to perform at the 2011 Oscars.
The first round voting took place from October 18 – 31, during which 31 audience award-winning films from the top 50 US and Canadian film festivals were narrowed through online voting to the five films with the highest number of votes. Round two of voting will take place until Nov. 18, and the winner will be announced at the Gotham Awards in New York on Nov. 26. Filmgoers can vote online for their favorite film.
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It’s hard to know exactly how to review something like The Invisible War, how to step back and look at it as a movie through the steady barrage of emotional devastation it presents. The stranger sitting next to me at my screening spent the latter half of the runtime sobbing into a fistful of tissues, and I couldn’t blame her — the film, the latest documentary from the Oscar-nominated Kirby Dick (Outrage, This Film Is Not Yet Rated) presents a sickening chorus of accounts not just of rape but of institutional betrayal, of a system that’s utterly failed to protect or serve those who’ve joined it.
The Invisible War is brutal in the cases of sexual assaults in the U.S. military it runs down, but it’s even harder to take when it then explores the lack of follow-up, the victim blaming and self-serving protection of those in charge and the status quo. Again and again, the interviewees in the film — who are mostly but not entirely women — tell stories of enlisting out of idealism, patriotism or family tradition, thinking they’ve found a place for themselves, only to realize that for some of their colleagues, they’ll only ever be a target, and for others, they’re going to be held responsible for their own safety and taken to task otherwise.
The film offers a variety of stories from military rape victims from different branches of the armed forces, including the Coast Guard and the Marines. Disturbing patterns quickly emerge. A woman ends up on assignment somewhere where she’s usually outnumbered. She gets harassed; she gets raped. She reports what happened to her superior officer, who either warns her off, or is a friend of the attacker, or would just rather the problem go away. And usually, at least for the…
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Critic faves Beasts of the Southern Wild and The House I Live In took top Grand Jury Prize honors tonight at the Sundance Film Festival, where the John Hawkes Oscar hopeful The Surrogate and Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War nabbed this year’s audience awards. Also earning Sundance 2012 kudos were the music doc Searching for Sugar Man, Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk With Me, and the Aubrey Plaza starrer Safety Not Guaranteed.
From the Sundance Institute press release:
The 2012 Sundance Film Festival Awards presented this evening were:
The Grand Jury Prize: Documentary was presented by Charles Ferguson to:
The House I Live In / U.S.A. (Director: Eugene Jarecki) — For over 40 years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world’s largest jailer and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet, drugs are cheaper, purer and more available today than ever. Where did we go wrong and what is the path toward healing?
The Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic was presented by Justin Lin to:
Beasts of the Southern Wild / U.S.A. (Director: Benh Zeitlin, Screenwriters: Benh Zeitlin, Lucy Alibar) — Waters gonna rise up, wild animals gonna rerun from the grave, and everything south of the levee is goin’ under, in this tale of a six year old named Hushpuppy, who lives with her daddy at the edge of the world. Cast: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry.
The World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary was presented by Nick Fraser to:
The Law in These Parts / Israel (Director: Ra’anan Alexandrowicz) — Israel’s 43-year military legal system in the Occupied Palestinian Territories unfolds through provocative interviews with the system’s architects and historical footage showing the enactment of these laws upon the Palestinian population.
The World Cinema Jury Prize: Dramatic was presented by Julia
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Full Story »A quick update on the flurry of Sundance deal-making of recent days, with well-received documentaries and less acclaimed but star-driven (read: marketable) narratives sitting pretty with distribution agreements. Will this be, as pundits predicted, a high-volume buying year in Park City?
This list will be updated as more films reach distribution deals this week at Sundance, where smaller hits (i.e. Beasts of the Southern Wild) and high profile pieces (Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer, which screens tonight) have piqued buyer interest. The documentary field is especially strong so far, with Searching for Sugar Man, The Queen of Versailles, Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War, and West of Memphis having already screened to warm responses, while a host of narratives featuring name actors have also shown promise.
Searching for Sugar Man (Sony Classics) – The documentary about 1960s musician Rodriguez played well to critics and was snatched up by SPC for a reported six figures.
The Queen of Versailles (Magnolia Pictures) – Another well-received doc, Lauren Greenfield’s examination of Florida real estate mogul David Siegel was picked up by Magnolia on Friday.
Black Rock (LD Distribution) – Katie Aselton’s thriller about three female friends (Aselton, Lake Bell, Kate Bosworth) surviving a weekend getaway gone wrong was the first Midnight selection to seal a deal, partnering with newbie venture LD Distribution.
The Words (CBS Films) – Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, and Jeremy Irons lead a cast of recognizable stars in this literary drama about a writer (Cooper) who claims credit on someone else’s manuscript and is confronted by its real author, so it’s easy to see why buyers were interested. CBS Films reportedly made the most expensive buy of the fest so far, Full Story »
