Three major Sundance awards give gay director Lee Daniels a "Push"

Lee Daniels

Gay director Lee Daniels' Push delivered on its buzz at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival by winning three top prizes at Saturday's awards ceremony.

Push was the big winner at this year's fest, winning both the grand jury prize and the audience award for the U.S. Dramatic category. (The last movie to win both top prizes also came from queer filmmakers: Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer's gay-inclusive coming-of-age drama Quinceañera.) The jury also voted to honor comedian Mo'Nique for her powerful, no-laughs role as one of the film's main villains.

Gabourey Sidibe

Based on the novel by bisexual author Sapphire (Ramona Lofton) — and not to be confused with the science-fiction action movie starring Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning of the same name that's opening soon in theaters — Push tells the story of overweight teen girl Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) who is being sexually abused by her father while her monstrous mother (Mo'Nique) imprisons the girl both mentally and physically. The illiterate Precious gets a new lease on life with the help of a lesbian teacher who helps her to overcome her circumstances.

As of Saturday, Push was still without a distributor, although Cinetic Media is allegedly circling the film. The three awards mark the latest triumph for producer-director Daniels, whose career includes the acclaimed Monster's Ball, the cult oddity Shadowboxer (also featuring Mo'Nique) and the Mariah Carey vehicle Tennessee, which had a quick Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles in December but may yet see a wider release.

Accepting the audience awards, Daniels said, "This is so important to me, because this is speaking for every minority that's in Harlem, that's in Detroit, that's in Watts, that's being abused, that can't read, that's obese and that we turn our back on. And this is for every gay little boy and girl that's being tortured. If I can do this shit, y'all can do this shit. Thank you very much."