Sundance: audience award for dramatic film, 1989-2019

Although the Sundance Film Festival began in 1978 as the Utah/U.S. Film Festival, it was only in 1981 that it moved from Salt Lake City to its current location in Park City and moved from September to January in the calendar. In 1985, the Sundance Institute took charge of organizing the festival, and in 1989 the festival gave its first Audience Awards for Best Dramatic Feature and Best Documentary Feature. At that time, there were still relatively few films in competition and relatively few awards.

In 1991, the festival formally became the Sundance Film Festival (though it is commonly referred to as just “Sundance”). It...