Park City-—The 2006 Sundance Film Festival is pleased to announce that THE HOUSE OF SAND, directed by Andrucha Waddington and written by Elena Soarez, is the recipient of this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The Prize, which carries a $20,000 cash award to the writer/director provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is presented to the outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character. The Prize will be presented at the Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony on Saturday, January 28.

Along with the coming-of-age genre, it's possible to detect other trends in the competition. In 1991, the festival was buzzing with the emergence of African-American directors: Matty Rich's painful chronicle Straight Out of Brooklyn, Joseph B. Vasquez' comedy-drama, Hangin' with the Homeboys, Julie Dash's poetic evocation, Daughters of the Dust.

If there was a unifying theme to many of the 1997 films, it concerned young people having to face maturity and adulthood. At least half a dozen films addressed those issues, including the familiar and flawed Arresting Gena; the sensitive lesbian meller, All Over Me; the gay drama, The Delta; the bleak Southern gothic, Eye of God; and of course, Hurricane, the picture that swept three awards, including a directing nod to Morgan J. Freeman.

It’s almost a given that genre films, even if they¬íre accomplished and made by world-class filmmakers don’t win festival awards. Take Curtis Hanson’s ¬ìL.A. Confidential¬î in 1997 and Clint Eastwood’s ¬ìMystic River¬î in 2003, two American noir dramas that were ignored in Cannes but went on to win major Oscars. Both films were sumptuously crafted and superlatively acted but they were made within a familiar generic tradition, classic American cinema.