It wasn't all just snow and screenings at Sundance for the Cinematical; every chance we had, we were snapping pics as well. Here's a round-up of the best of our Sundance pics (more photos past the jump).

I don't think I've ever seen a Q&A where both audience members and casts started unabashedly crying - Sherrybaby is the first. Director Laurie Collyer told the audience tearfully the film was inspired by a friend of hers who was lost to addiction, and how she had tried to understand why her life went one direction and her friend's life in another, not-so-good direction. Then it got started with the first question: a woman in the front row stood and talked for quite a while about the film and how deeply it affected her. She started sobbing through her words, the cast started crying, then the audience got all teary - it was a regular waterworks there in the Racquet Club Theater. It speaks, though, to how moved people were by the film.

Collyer was asked a question about  Ryan Simpkins, the young actress who plays Alexis, Sherry's daughter. She discussed how Maggie Gyllenhaal (who played Sherry) became very protective of Ryan, in the same way that Sherry is protective of Alexis. She recalled how that created friction between herself as the director and Gyllenhaal as an actress, but in a very positive way that helped the film, and helped the tension between Sherry and Lynette feel very real and tangible.Then someone asked how everyone got involved with the film, and the cast did a round of pass-the-mic. Ryan said that she read the script "about 50 times", and that her favorite scenes were "the one in the car, and the birthday party". Ryan also offered her opinion that Laurie is a "very good director".

Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a heart-rending, Oscar-worthy performance in Sherrybaby, written and directed by Laurie Collyer. Gyllenhaal plays Sherry Swanson, a former teenage heroin addict coming off a three year prison sentence and trying to stay clean and get her life back on track. Sherry also wants desperately to be reunited with her young daughter, Alexis (Ryan Simpkins) , who has been cared for by Sherry's brother Bob (Brad William Henke) and his wife Lynette (Bridget Barkan) in her absence. Sherry checks into a halfway house, looks for a job, meets with her parole officer, goes to twelve-step meetings, and struggles to reestablish trust and love with Alexis, who has come to view Lynette as a mother-figure in Sherry's absence. A dark secret of sexual abuse lurks in the closet of Sherry's past, though, and she keeps tripping over the consequences of not resolving her issues around the past.

Sherrybaby is a superbly intense film - not in the thriller film sense, but in the way you come to feel so much for the characters: Bob, torn between his love for his sister, and his love for his wife, who resents Sherry's return; Alexis, torn between the mother-figure who has cared for her and her real mother, who wants her daughter's love so tangibly, you can almost reach through the screen and touch it, and most of all Sherry. You can't help but root silently for her, even as you want to smack her for some of the choices she makes. Gyllenhaal gives the best performance of her career to date in this film, and she's a superb actress, so that's saying a lot. When she stands up at the dinner table to poignantly sing The Bangles "Eternal Flame" to her daughter - a serenade of her love for the child she has never taken proper care of, and her own ardent desire to be a good mother, Gyllenhaal radiates maternal love and desperation.