Clemency, directed by Chinonye Chukwu and starring Alfre Woodard, won the US grand jury prize for drama, while Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s One Child Nation took the documentary award.
Both the selection of films at this year’s Sundance film festival – and the writers rating them – were defined by their diversity.
The awards, too, were notable for the number of female film-makers celebrated, with Jane Campion’s jury handing gongs to movies, 57% of which were directed by women and 35% by people of colour.
Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir won the world cinema grand jury prize by unanimous vote, while the audience prizes went to the comedy Brittany Runs a Marathon and the congressional race documentary Knock Down the House, which tracks the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.