year-old girl and a documentary about the war on drugs took top honors at the Sundance Film Festival. “Beasts of the Southern Wild” won the grand jury prize in the U.S. dramatic competition, and “The House I Live In” won the same honor in the U.S. documentary category Saturday at the independent film festival's awards ceremony. Directed and co-written by 29-year-old first-time filmmaker Benh Zeitlin, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” follows a girl named Hushpuppy who lives with her father in the southern Delta. The film also won the cinematography prize. Zeitlin said he was grateful to the Sundance Institute and labs, where he worked on the film for more than three years. “This project was such a runt, this sort of messy-hair, dirty, wild child, and we just have been taken care of and just eased along until we were ready to stand up on our own,” he said in an interview after the ceremony. “It's just great that it happened here. This is the right place for the world to meet the film.” Zeitlin described his spunky young star, Quvenzhane Wallis, as “the biggest person I know.” She said she is ready to be a movie star, but first will be going back to third grade. Fox Searchlight acquired the film earlier this week. Eugene Jarecki's documentary “The House I Live In” examines the social, human and financial costs of the war on drugs. The filmmaker won the same award in 2005 for his documentary “Why We Fight.”
