Sundance Film Festival - the big winners and some surprising losers

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a dramedy about a high-school senior and his relationship with a classmate with leukaemia, was the big winner at the Sundance Film Festival which concluded last week.

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's film, which uses animation and other flourishes in its coming-of-age story, took the audience and grand jury prizes in the US dramatic category.

"This movie is about processing loss and celebrating a beautiful life and a beautiful man," Gomez-Rejon said as he accepted the grand jury prize, alluding to his late father, Julio Cesar Gomez-Rejon, to whom the film is dedicated. "This week has been incredibly cathartic for so many reasons," he said earlier upon accepting the audience prize.

The prizes for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl marks the third time in as many years that a film won the top audience and jury honours in the lead category of US dramatic after W hiplash and Fruitvale Station pulled off the feat the past two years.

With its pop-cultural references and intimate look at a confused teenager, Gomez-Rejon's film was a huge crowd-pleaser when it premiered at the festival. Fox Searchlight snapped up rights to the movie for release later this year.

Offbeat imprisoned-children documentary The Wolfpack landed the grand jury prize for best US documentary. Crystal Moselle's movie examines a group of brothers held captive by their father in a New York apartment as they turn to movies and movie re-enactments for redemption.

"I stopped these kids on the street one day and here I am," the filmmaker said in accepting the prize, adding: "Life is surreal." Robert Eggers took the directing prize in the US dramatic category for The Witch, his supernatural story of evil spirits and exorcisms in Puritan-era America.