The 52nd Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) wrapped its 11-day run on Sunday, concluding its run of 71 narrative features, 34 docs, and 98 shorts with an awards ceremony at The Vera Project. The fest handed out its juried prizes alongside the audience-voted Golden Space Needle Awards, capping off a competitive lineup that heavily favored new independent talent.

On the audience side, the crowd-pleaser Edie Arnold is a Loser, directed by Megan Rico and Kade Atwood, took home the coveted Golden Space Needle Award for Best Film. Meanwhile, Ildikó Enyedi scored the Best Director trophy for her helming of Silent Friend, and Indy Navarrette snagged Best Performance for the buzzy thriller Obsession, a title that also scooped up the Seattle Film Critics Society Award. JJ Gerber’s The Life We Leave scored top honors as Best Documentary, while Sara Joe Wolansky’s The Big Cheese secured the Lena Sharpe Award for Persistence of Vision, given to the festival’s top audience-voted film directed by a woman.

The juried competitions, which carry a $5,000 cash prize, gave several indie titles a boost in their hunt for U.S. distribution. In the Official Competition, Taratoa Stappard’s Māori gothic thriller Mārama took home the Grand Jury Prize. Over in the New Directors sidebar, Tribeny Rai’s Shape of Momo won top honors for its naturalistic exploration of female agency.

The New American Cinema Jury awarded its top prize to Lloyd Lee Choi’s gig-economy drama Lucky Lu, while Ramzi Bashour’s road-trip feature Hot Water took home the inaugural Dan Ireland Prize, pocketing $3,000. On the non-fiction front, Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak’s wartime romance Birds of War secured the Documentary Grand Jury Prize. In the Ibero-American Competition, Joaquín del Paso’s migrant drama The Garden We Dreamed walked away with the top jury prize.