Sundance/NHK Award Goes To Jens Assur

Jens Assur, director of the upcoming film Close Far Away, is the winner of this year’s Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award. The annual award recognizes and supports a visionary filmmaker’s work on on his or her next project. Sundance Institute staff provide creative and strategic support through development, financing and production of the films. Close Far Away is a dramatic thriller weaving together stories of five seemingly random individuals in Africa and Europe whose actions have global consequences. Film Rites’ Steve Zaillian and Garrett Basch produced. Assur’s short film Killing the Chickens to Save the Monkeys is in the festival this year. Two previous winners of the Sundance/NHK award also had films at this year’s Sundance: Beasts of the Southern Wild, by Benh Zeitlin and Elena, by Russian filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev.