Eric Lavallée

Most cinephiles are perhaps more familiar with Smith's feature debut - the low budget (8 million dollar range) The Ruins for Spielberg's Dreamworks. Not much has happened since 2008, Smith has stuck to his roots, made this 25/25 item for Elle magazine, but apparently had the time to sneak in a short film this summer which will be showcased at the upcoming Sundance Film Fest.

Debra Granik's Winter's Bone went two for four at the 2010 Gotham awards claiming Best Ensemble and the coveted, top prize of Best Feature beating out the much-liked other Sundance titles in Blue Valentine and The Kids Are All right and TIFF titles Black Swan and Let The Right One In. I think many indie film insider would agree that this was Winter's Bone award to lose, and with tomorrow's Indie Spirit nominations unveiling (where we should expect more mentions) 2010 will have been quite the comeback year for Debra Granik, whose debut film Down to the Bone would critically do well but pretty much disappeared from the map straight-after.

Academy Awards didn't even consider for the 15 list of noms, but the Gothams didn't forget The Oath, Laura Poitras' doc about a pair of folks close to Osama bin Laden that was distributed by Zeitgeist films and will most probably be compensated by the Cinema Eye Awards right before Sundance in January.

If you ask me: this was a fight between an underdog in Winter’s Bone and a favorite in The Kids Are All Right (Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo). The underdog won.

When the Safdie bros. preemed their debut feature in Cannes (film formerly known as Go Get Some Rosemary), I was sort of shocked and admired by what I saw. Daddy Longlegs counts as a strong indication that Ronnie Bronstein might have opened the door to an unexpected extra career to that of filmmaking (his Frownland won at the Gotham awards in 2007).