Sundance Chooses War Films for Competition

America's leading independent film festival, Sundance, chose to distinguish films about war when it announced its competition winners on Saturday night in Park City, Utah.

Two of the top four prizes were given to features about military conflicts. Why We Fight, a film about the American war machine, picked up a documentary grand jury prize, while The Hero, about the return home of a veteran of Angola's civil war, scooped a world cinema grand jury award.

More war-related features were also praised: British film-maker Sean McAllister won a special jury prize for The Liberace of Baghdad, the portrait of an Iraqi concert pianist. The same award was given to Wall, a Franco-Israeli production on the controversial wall separating parts of Israel from the Palestinian territories.

A feature about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Shake Hands with the Devil, was also recognised with an audience gong.

The two other top prizes were given to an American family drama and a Dutch documentary. Forty Shades of Blue, a film describing a love triangle between an American music producer, his Russian-immigrant girlfriend and his son, scooped the main award in the US drama category. Shape of the Moon, a portrait of an Indonesian family, picked up a documentary grand jury prize.

This year's Sundance was dominated by war and politics, with 12 films on the subject in competition in the newly created world cinema documentary category. Robert Redford, its founder, had opened Sundance by celebrating it as a "festival of dissent.

"This is really a festival about different voices in film that reflect, a little more accurately, the world we live in," said the actor/director.