The winners of the 2001 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award were announced at the weekend at the close of the Sundance Film Festival. The award was created to honour and support emerging film-makers with their next screenplays - one each from the US, Europe, Latin America and Japan.

The winning filmmakers and their projects are The Mudge Boy by Michael Burke from the US, Every Stewardess Goes To Heaven by Daniel Burman from Latin America, Halima's Paradise by Fatima Jebli-Ouazani from Europe and Woman of Water from Hidenori Sugimori from Japan.

The award, which was established in 1996, includes a $10,000 cash prize as well as a guarantee by NHK to purchase Japanese broadcast rights upon completion of each film. Previous winners include Walter Salles' Central Station, Chris Eyre's Smoke Signals and Rodrigo Garcia's Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her.

Winning projects which have been completed this year include Dana Rotberg's Otilia Rauda (Mexico), Lucrecia Martel's La Cienega (Argentina) and Sara Sugarman's Very Annie Mary (Wales). Other winners which played at Sundance this year include Yoshiyasu Fujita's The Bleep Brothers, DeMane Davis and Khari Streeter's Lift, and Randy Redroad's The Doe Boy.