The 35th Heartland Film Festival put real money behind its mission in Indianapolis, awarding $80,000 in cash prizes to filmmakers at its Awards Brunch on Sunday, October 18. Since 1992, Heartland Film has presented $4 million in cash prizes — the largest total awarded by any film festival in North America.

The $20,000 Narrative Feature Grand Prize went to Liz Sargent’s Take Me Home, accepted by executive producer Lydia Storie. The film follows Anna, a 38-year-old Korean adoptee caring for her aging parents, whose fragile routine is upended by a Florida heat wave. The jury praised its “tender, unsentimental portrayal of disability, caregiving and the fragile ecosystem of family,” and a performance that “grants its central character the fullness too often denied to people with cognitive disabilities.”

The $20,000 Documentary Feature Grand Prize was one of three honors for The Fish Don’t Care When It Rains, directed by Jennifer Msumba and Siobhan McDonnell, which also took the Overall Documentary Audience Choice Award and the $2,000 Richard D. Propes Documentary Social Impact Award. The world-premiere documentary tells the story of autistic artist Jen Msumba, who spent seven years inside the Judge Rotenberg Center and fought back — telling her story through testimony, music and art. McDonnell and executive producer Wanda Bryant Hope accepted in person, with Msumba and producer Tony Armer joining by video call.

Elsewhere, Mat Hames’ Home from the Vietnam War received the $5,000 Jimmy Stewart Legacy Award — Heartland is the only festival in the world sanctioned by the Stewart Family to present it — along with the Official Selection Documentary Audience Choice Award. The inaugural Allen Whitehill Clowes Awards, $10,000 each, went to AJ Tesler’s Maybe We Should and Loving Karma by Johnny Burke and Andrew Hinton. “The films honored this year exemplify what Heartland Film has championed for 35 years,” said Artistic Director Greg Sorvig — “stories that deepen our understanding of one another.”