Director: Deborah Granik

Boasting an Oscar-nominated performance that put Jennifer Lawrence firmly on Hollywood’s radar, Deborah Granik’s hard-edged tale of survival, family, crime and danger proved to be one of those films that translates Sundance critical kudos into real, mainstream success. And that’s despite the raw tale of Ree (Lawrence), a young woman dealing with a wayward, drug-dealing father and struggling to keep her younger siblings safe in a world where she’s never treated with the respect she so clearly deserves. Unflinchingly on a quest for truth, she’s alternately helped and/or hindered by the likes of Garret Dillahunt’s sheriff and her uncle Teardrop, a performance that earned John Hawkes one of the movie’s other well-deserved Oscar nods.