The Philippines-set documentary "Give Up Tomorrow" has won the Heineken Audience Award at the 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival, TFF organizers announced on Saturday night.
The award comes with a $25,000 prize for director Michael Collins, and was presented at the festival's closing-night wrap party at Eye Beam in New York City.
The documentary deals with the decade-long ordeal of Paco Larrañaga, a 19-year-old student who was arrested for kidnap, rape and murder despite numerous eyewitnesses and extensive evidence to support his innocence. The film drew standing ovations at its Tribeca screenings and had risen to the top of the Heineken Audience Award standings posted on the TFF website.
Collins' film was a true Tribeca creation; the director is an alumnus of the Tribeca Film Institute's All Access program, and the film was supported by the TFI's Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund.
Collins received a special mention from the TFF documentary jury, which called his film "a powerful work of investigative journalism." (That jury unanimously awarded its top prize to Alma Har'el's "Bombay Beach.")
Unlike the jury awards, which in most cases were limited to fields of about a dozen films, the Audience Award is open to almost all films that screen at the festival, with the exception of special screenings.
Also read: 'She Monkeys,' 'Bombay Beach' Win Tribeca Honors
Other films that had scored high with Tribeca audiences, according to the festival website, are the documentaries "When the Drum is Beating," "Carol Channing: Larger Than Life" and "Semper Fi: Always Faithful." Throughout the festival, the Audience Award standings were dominated by documentaries.
This marks the second consecutive year that a doc has won the festival's top audience prize, following last year's victory for the music film "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage."
Before that, winners included the New York-set comedy "City Island," a low-key hit for Anchor Bay when it was released in 2010, and highly-regarded Swedish horror film "Let the Right One In," which prompted last year's American remake "Let Me In."
All of this year's winning Tribeca films, including "Give Up Tomorrow," will screen on Sunday, the festival's final day.