Thriller film 'Nani' wins top prize at Sundance Festival
Actress Anna Diop, star of the thriller "Nani".
archival
The fantasy thriller "Nanny," about an undocumented immigrant working for a wealthy New York family, won the top prize at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.
The film, starring Anna Diop and Michel Monaghan and directed by Nikiate Gosso, shows the sacrifices of Senegalese nanny Aisha, who leaves her mother country and her young son in order to build a new life.
"We haven't seen many films in America, especially, that truly reflect the unequal level of representation of black and brown women...that is, domestic workers who contribute to maintaining the country's resilience," Josu said in an online speech during the festival.
"I wanted to focus on the women who are usually on the sidelines of other women's stories," added Joso, an American from a Sierra Leonean immigrant family.
The film's heroine, Anna Diop, known for her appearances in the television series Titans, was born in Senegal and moved to the United States as a child.
The release date of the film, which deals with African folklore as well as issues of race and motherhood, has not yet been set.
The Sundance Independent Film Festival, launched by actor Robert Redford, was held hypothetically for the second year in a row due to the increase in cases of COVID-19 across the United States after the outbreak of the Omicron mutant, while it was usually held in the mountains of western Utah.
"The Exiles," directed by Kristin Choi, which won the award for best documentary, deals with the story of three exiled Chinese dissidents involved in the Tiananmen Square events in 1989.
The audience award for best drama went to "Cha Cha Real Smooth," which stars Dakota Johnson as an elderly fiancée who has an affair with a college graduate played by writer and director Cooper Rafe.
Apple+ bought the film during the festival for $15 million, the biggest deal so far made at this year's event.
The documentary Navalny, which was added to the festival's slate at the last minute, won the Audience Award for Best Documentary.
The film centers around the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, one of the Kremlin's most prominent critics.
Director Daniel Rohr said he wanted the film to provoke "worldwide outrage and protest" against Navalny's prison.
The film, to be shown by CNN and HBO Max later this year, follows the Russian opposition leader, his family and aides, during his five-month period in Germany recovering from a poisoning in late 2020 and early 2021.
Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news