A crowd-pleasing biography of cult cartoonist Harvey Pekar took the top prize at the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend.
“American Splendor,” a winning potpourri of fiction, archival footage and animation starring Paul Giamatti as the churlish Pekar, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for best drama.
The awards were presented Saturday night at a star-studded ceremony hosted by indie stalwarts Maggie Gyllenhaal and Steve Zahn.
“Capturing the Friedmans,” which blends documentary footage and home videos to tell the story of a Long Island family torn apart when the husband and son are arrested for child molestation, was award the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary.
“I’ve had people tell me it was like a tragic version of ‘The Osbournes,’ ” said director Andrew Jarecki.
Sundance filmgoers handed the audience award for dramatic films to the oddball drama “The Station Agent,” about a misanthropic dwarf who lives in an abandoned New Jersey train depot.
This year’s unofficial Queen of Sundance, Patricia Clarkson, won a jury prize for acting in “The Station Agent,” as well as two other films, “Pieces of April” and “All the Real Girls.”
And theater veteran Charles Busch was awarded a jury prize for his cross-dressing turn in the hilarious Hollywood spoof “Die, Mommy, Die.”
First-time director Catherine Hardwicke won the dramatic directing award for “thirteen,” a provocative film about a seventh-grader who goes off the rails, which Hardwicke co-wrote with her teenage protégée Nikki Reed.
The documentary audience award went to “My Flesh and Blood,” which traces a year in the life of a woman who adopted 11 special-needs children – and its director, Jonathan Karsh, won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary directing.
The 11-day festival, held in Park City, Utah, wrapped up yesterday.