Thursday, January 25----As the Sundance Film Festival moves into its final days (and the announcement of its competition awards on Saturday evening), the first of several awards announcements was made today. The Sundance Institute and NHK/Japan Broadcasting Corporation announced the winners of the 2007 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards. The four winners were selected from among 12 finalists by members of an international jury which included: Guillermo Arriaga, Carlos Diegues, Toshio Endo, Bent Hamer, Yoshio Kakeo, Mitsuo Yanagimachi, Pawel Pawlikowski, Brad Silberling, and Rafael Yglesias.

These annual awards were created in 1996 to honor and support visionary film directors from four global regions (Europe, Latin America, the United States and Japan) in realizing their next projects. The four winners will be presented with their awards at the Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony on Saturday evening.

Each winning director will receive a $10,000 cash award and a guarantee from NHK to purchase the Japanese television broadcast rights upon completion of their project. The winning filmmakers and projects are:

Lucía Cedrón (Argentina): AGNUS DEI
A young woman’s elderly grandfather is kidnapped for ransom during a crime wave following the Argentinean economic crisis of 2002. She learns about his role in the military dictatorship of the 1970’s and must then consider one of the paradoxes of Argentinean society: what can we forgive and how much can we forget?

Dagur Kári (Iceland): THE GOOD HEART
Jaques, an ailing middle-aged bar owner, and Lucas, a young homeless man recovering from an attempted suicide, become friends during their stay in the hospital. Their friendship is tested when a drunken stewardess comes between them as Jaques trains Lucas to take over the bar.

Tomoko Kana (Japan): TWO BY THE RIVER
An elderly man has an increasingly hard time caring for his infirm wife until finally, with only memories of their life together to offer solace, he feels compelled to make a very difficult choice.

Caran Hartsfield (USA): BURY ME STANDING
A random act of violence triggers a change within a bizarre family dynamic, as each member reexamines the ignored, the hidden and the things left unsaid.

“The Sundance/ NHK award is part of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program which provides year-round creative and strategic support to U.S. and international filmmakers. We are thrilled by the vision and diversity of the winning directors,” stated Michelle Satter, Director, Sundance Institute Feature Film Program.

Past recipients of the award include: Miranda July, ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (USA); Andrucha Waddington, THE HOUSE OF SAND (Brazil); Lucrecia Martel, LA CIENAGA (Argentina); Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, WHISKY (Uruguay); Walter Salles, CENTRAL STATION (Brazil); Chris Eyre, SMOKE SIGNALS (USA); György Pálfi, TAXIDERMIA (Hungary) and Catalin Mitulescu, THE WAY I SPENT THE END OF THE WORLD (Romania).

Sandy Mandelberger
Sundance Online Dailies Editor