Love and death conquer all at Sundance film festival

It follows terminally-ill patients who decide to end their lives in US.

PARK CITY: An Anglo-American story of young love entitled Like Crazy and a moving documentary about euthanasia, How to Die in Oregon, won the top prizes at the Sundance film festival.

The climax of the prestigious 10-day independent film festival also saw honours for a Norwegian tale of sexual re-awakening and another US-British film about a soldier’s struggle after being injured in Afghanistan. The Grand Jury Prize for a US drama went to Like Crazy by Drake Doremus, which tells the story of a British and American student couple forced to live apart after she overstays her visa in the US.

How to die in Oregon by US filmmaker Peter Richardson, which won the best US documentary prize, is a heartbreakingly honest film which casts a sober light on the reality of euthanasia. It follows the final months, days and moments of terminally-ill patients who decide to end their lives in the western US state, which in 1994 became the first in the US to legalise euthanasia.

The top foreign drama prize went to Norwegian filmmaker Anne Sewitsky’s Happy, which recounts how a woman trapped in a passion-less marriage finds sexual fulfilment in the arms of a new neighbour. The top prize for a foreign documentary went to the moving Anglo-American film Hell and Back Again, which tells the story of 25-year-old marine Nathan Harris, after he is seriously injured in the struggle with the Taliban.

Position Among the Stars by Dutch director Leonard Retel Helmrich is about the daily life of an Indonesian family in a Jakarta slum, won a Special Jury Prize, as did Tyrannosaur by Briton Paddy Considine.

US documentary Being Elmo, a Puppeteer’s Journey about the man behind the cuddly Sesame Street monster and Another Earth by American Mike Cahill were also given special jury awards.

The prizes were announced at the end of the 27th Sundance Film Festival which has become the biggest festival and film market in the United States, attracting Hollywood studios and scouts looking for young cinema talent.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st,  2011.