The 2022 Sundance Film Festival, which was held online this year due to COVID, came to a close last week with the naming of 26 jury awarded and six audience awarded prizes.

Grand Jury Prizes awarded to” Nanny” in the U.S. Dramatic category, “The Exiles” for U.S. Documentary, the Bolivian set “Utama” in World Cinema Dramatic section and All That Breathes” taking home the World Cinema Documentary award. The Audience Awards are often seen as a bellwether for future commercial and/or critical success . This year’s awards went to ” Cha Cha Real Smooth” (U.S. Dramatic), “Navalny” (U.S. Documentary), “Girl Picture” (World Cinema Dramatic), “The Territory” (World Cinema Documentary)” and “Framing Agnes” (NEXT).

“Navalny,” a riveting documentary about the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, also picked up the Festival Favorite Award. There have been reports that the Russian government, has called on media outlets in the country to remove all coverage of the film.

Long a launching pad for indie darlings from “Reservoir Dogs” to “Whiplash,” the trend for at least three years now has been that streaming services such as Netflix, AppleTV and Hulu scoop up many of the films that would otherwise be headed for a theatrical release. The horror satire “Fresh” was headed to Hulu even before the festival started and Amazon Studios was responsible for “Emergency,” Sundance’s opening night film. We’ll be providing further details and analysis of acquisitions coming out of Sundance in a piece being published on Celluloid Junkie in the coming days.