But what were the films focused on? Pressing social issues.
"Padre Nuestro," the Grand Jury Prize dramatic winner, was a dog-eat-dog tale of Mexican immigrants scrambling to survive in New York. The documentary jury's top honors went to another film about Latin America, "Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)," an examination of corruption and kidnapping in Brazil.
"Grace Is Gone," which won both the Audience Award and screenwriting prize, starred John Cusack as a father dealing with his soldier wife's death in Iraq. The war in Iraq also was the subject of "No End in Sight," which the documentary jury gave a special prize for how it "illuminates the misguided policy decisions" of the Bush administration.
The World Cinema Documentary jury gave its top prize to "Enemies of Happiness," a Danish doc about one of the first women elected to Afghanistan's parliament.
And issues of disability were played out in the documentary Audience Award winner "Hear and Now," in which filmmaker Irene Taylor Brodsky chronicled her deaf parents' cochlear-implant surgeries, and in Israeli director Dror Shaul's "Sweet Mud," the World Cinema Dramatic jury winner about a kibbutz resident dealing with his mother's mental illness and the kibbutz community's abandonment of her.
Despair was onscreen all over, whether in the disintegrating couple in "Snow Angels" or the drugged-out teens in "Weapons," but most famously in the anguished face of Dakota Fanning in "Hounddog" - a drama that went from controversy magnet to critical washout in the course of a single Racquet Club screening.
Will audiences want to watch these downers once the films leave the hothouse environment of Park City for the cruel realities of Hollywood movie distribution? Surprisingly, yes. After all, "Grace Is Gone" did get the Audience Award, and mogul Harvey Weinstein is betting $4 million of The Weinstein Co.'s money he can get America to watch - and he'll likely mount an Oscar campaign for Cusack to convince us.
But Sundance '07 wasn't all doom and gloom. One of the festival's best movies was also one of the sweetest: John Carney's Irish musical romance (and World Cinema Audience Award winner) "Once," a running duet between a Dublin street musician (Glen Hansard) and a Czech immigrant (Marketa Irglova) told over a series of Hansard's plaintive love songs. It was one of those movies that reminded you how simple love - whether romantic love or the love of movies - could be.
