Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize Winners Through The Years – Photo Gallery

The Sundance Film Festival is regarded as one of the most prestigious independent film festivals, where filmmakers have been premiering their movies and documentaries since 1984.

The festival was founded in 1978 by Sterling Van Wagenen, the head of Robert Redford’s company Wildwood, and John Earle of the Utah Film Commission under the name Utah/US Film Festival to attract more filmmakers to Utah.

Redford founded the Sundance Institute in 1981 to foster independence, risk-taking, and new voices in American film. That year, 10 emerging filmmakers were invited to the Sundance Resort in the mountains of Utah, where they worked with leading writers, directors and actors to develop their original independent projects.

By 1984, the festival had established itself and was officially renamed the Sundance Film Festival after Redford’s character in his 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That year, the Grand Jury Prize in Dramatics was awarded to Old Enough, an American comedy-drama coming-of-age film written and directed by Marisa Silver. It starred Sarah Boyd, Alyssa Milano and Rainbow Harvest.

Since then, only 15 female directors have been awarded the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Joyce Chopra (Smooth Talk, 1986), Jill Godmilow (Waiting For the Moon, 1987), Nancy Savoca (True Love, 1989), Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, 2000), Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocity, 2002), Shari Springer Berman (American Splendor, 2003) Courtney Hunt (Frozen River, 2008), Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone, 2010), Desiree Akhavan (The Miseducation of Cameron Post, 2018), Chinonye Chukwu (Clemency, 2019), Sian Heder (CODA, 2021), Nikyatu Jusu (Nanny, 2022),  A.V. Rockwell (A Thousand and One, 2023) & Alessandra Lacorazza (In The Summers).

Heder’s film CODA would become the first Sundance film also to win an Oscar for Best Picture, accomplishing the feat at the 94th Academy Awards. Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari won the Grand Jury Prize in 2020 and would garner six Academy Award nominations in 2021 including for Best Picture. 

Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and U.S. Dramatic Audience Award in 2014. It went on to win three Oscars, including Supporting Actor for J.K. Simmons’ performance as Terence Fletcher, the brutally savage music instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential. Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild was supported by Sundance Labs and won the Grand Jury Prize and Excellence in Cinematography Award in 2012, on its way to be nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Directing, Leading Actress and Writing (Adapted Screenplay).

Scroll through the photo gallery for all the winners of the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize.