The prizes of the Sundance Film Festival 2025 were handed out January 31. The World Cinema Documentary, NEXT, U.S. Documentary and Audience awards are as follows:
- World Cinema Grand Jury Prize Documentary: Cutting Through Rocks by Sara Khaki. Jury citation: This beautiful and nuanced portrait shows us a fearless eccentric who confronts male-dominated society when she runs for office in a remote Iranian village. Her determination, warmth, and humor and the way her story is told left us in awe.
- World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award: Mr. Nobody Against Putin by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin. Jury citation: For the courageous act of documenting the insidious origins of propaganda in Russian schools and for showing us how easy it is to use misinformation to manipulate.
- World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression: Coexistence, My Ass! by Amber Fares. Jury citation: For showing us how to have a challenging conversation with humor and humanity and for having the courage to say things others cannot.
- Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary. 2000 Meters to Andriivka by Mstyslav Chernov. Jury citation: For his extraordinarily brave and sensitive film about a single battle in the Russia-Ukraine war, a film with images of shocking and unforgettable beauty and delicate character portraits.
- Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary: Prime Minister by Michelle Walshe, Lindsay Utz
- Next: Innovator Award: Zodiac Killer Project: Charlie Shackleton. Jury citation: I really loved each of these totally original films, but one truly stood out in its innovation, its structure, its wild pivot from its original inspiration, the brilliant and hilarious 16mm panning and zooming location shots, and its funny and insightful commentary on the very kind of film it was originally meant to be. There is no film like it.
- U.S. Grand Jury Prize Documentary: Seeds by Brittany Shyne. Jury citation: It is our great honor to award the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary to a truly special film that evokes and illustrates all that we come to Sundance to discover — a new voice with something powerful, rich, and poignant to say. From its directing, cinematography, and dreamlike immersion, this film takes us deep inside an essentially overlooked pocket of our country, whose residents struggle to hold onto their heritage as their way of life has come under threat. The fact that this is the filmmaker’s feature debut speaks to the arrival of an exciting new talent in documentary.
- Directing Award: U.S. Documentary: The Perfect Neighbor by Geeta Gandbhir. Jury citation: The Directing award goes to a filmmaker of remarkably disciplined vision who turns creative constraints into cinematic power, creating a searing indictment of “stand your ground laws.”
- Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award: U.S. Documentary: Editor: Parker Laramie, André is an Idiot”by Tony Benna. Jury citation: The nuanced edit of this film allows the audience to see the beauty and humor of our final years. With its larger-than-life protagonist, André is an Idiot allows you to laugh, breathe, and travel through a long and emotional journey with melody, rhythm, and grace.
- U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award. Life After by Reid Davenport. Jury citation: This Special Jury Award goes to a film that asks profound, unsettling questions about life and death, individual autonomy vs public policy, and what defines — and who determines — the quality of an individual life. The filmmaker’s unflinching approach forces us to examine our assumptions about a person’s right to die… and live.
- U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Archival Storytelling: Selena y Los Dinos by Isabel Castro. Jury citation: This award goes to a film that transported us to a specific time and place, evoking themes of family, heritage, love, and adolescence. The power of the story speaks to the essential nature of the archive — employed in this film to chart the emergence of a once-in-a-generation talent.
- Audience Award: U.S. Documentary: André is an Idiot by Tony Benna.
