Kanbar Institute’s Cary Fukunaga Wins Sundance 2009 Directing Award

      Cary Joji Fukunaga, a student in the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television’s Graduate Film Division in the Tisch School of the Arts, took home the 2009 Sundance Film Festival’s Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic competition for his film Sin Nombre, which also received the Excellence in Cinematography Award. The Sundance Festival announced the winners on Jan. 24 at its closing awards ceremony in Park City, Utah.
      Sin Nombre, written and directed by Fukunaga, is described as a social-political thriller in the tradition of American film noir. It tells the stories of Sayra, a teenager living in Honduras and hungering for a brighter future, and teen gang members Smiley and Casper, who come from southern Mexico and for whom the Mara Salvatrucha, a gang that originated in Los Angeles and spread to Central America, is nearly their entire universe. The two narratives intersect on a train to the Mexican border.
      “It’s almost impossible to believe that Sin Nombre is Fukunaga’s feature debut; its storytelling is so accomplished, its visual style so crisp, and its heightened naturalism and performances so textured,” said the Sundance catalogue entry for the film. “Sin Nombre is a portrait of hope and desperation and announces the launching of a shining new filmmaking career.”
      Fukunaga, who will graduate from NYU with an M.F.A. in film production, wrote and directed Sin Nombre as his graduate thesis project.
      “We are thrilled for Cary’s win at Sundance this year,” said John Tintori, chair of the Graduate Film Division. “He participated in a pre-thesis review with the film a couple of years ago, and he will have his review in April and will graduate in May.”
      Film reviewer Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote in his review of the film, “A big new talent arrives on the scene with Sin Nombre. In the most positive sense, this is the quintessential Sundance movie, the sort of film that institute organizers might have dreamed about when they launched Sundance’s Latin American outreach years ago and began inviting a wide range of aspiring filmmakers to its labs.”
      This is the 16th year for the Tisch School of the Arts and its Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at the Sundance Film Festival. This year, more than 225 NYU alumni and students were associated with some 60 of the 200 films screened this year. The alumni and students involved represent directors, producers, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers, and editors, among others.
      —Richard Pierce