Filmmaker Noah Baumbach Wins Two Sundance Awards

Noah Baumbach

(January 31, 2005) - Noah Baumbach’s autobiographically inspired comic drama The Squid and the Whale, partially written at Yaddo, won high praise from audiences and critics and two major prizes during its premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, which wrapped up over the weekend in Park City, Utah.

The Squid and the Whale, the story of two brothers in 1980s Brooklyn dealing with the divorce of their parents, won the festival’s American Directing Award and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Mr. Baumbach is both the writer and director for the film, which stars Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, and Owen Kline.

The Sundance premiere of The Squid and the Whale closely followed the nationwide opening of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which Mr. Baumbach co-wrote with Wes Anderson, one of the producers of The Squid and the Whale.