Angels in America wins Humanitas Prize

The writers of the TV miniseries Angels in America and the dark thriller Dirty Pretty Things won $25,000 Humanitas Prizes on Thursday, awards presented for works that "entertain and enrich the viewing public." Out playwright Tony Kushner won for Angels in America, the HBO miniseries adapted from his play about heavenly guardians and an ensemble of New Yorkers touched by the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Humanitas leaders called it a "brutally honest examination of society coming to terms with the reality of AIDS. Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson lead the cast of Angels in America. Steven Knight won for Dirty Pretty Things, a film about illegal immigrants in London who stumble on a black-market trade in human organs run out of the hotel where they work. Humanitas overseers cited Dirty Pretty Things for its "stark and realistic depiction of the life of undocumented workers." Directed by Stephen Frears, Dirty Pretty Things stars Audrey Tautou, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Sergi Lopez. Other winners of the Humanitas screenwriting awards: - Jacob Aaron Estes, who won the group's $10,000 prize for Sundance Film Festival features for Mean Creek, his gay-inclusive tale of youths turning against one another during a river trip. - Barbara Hall, winner of a $15,000 prize for the pilot episode of CBS's Joan of Arcadia, about a teenage girl who meets a stranger claiming to be God. - JacQui Clay, who received a $10,000 award for an episode of Fox's The Bernie Mac Show in which Bernie tells a fib to comfort his nephew about the absence of his deadbeat dad. - Toni Ann Johnson and Michael D'Antonio, winners of a $10,000 prize for Crown Heights, a Showtime movie about an effort to heal wounds from the riots that broke out after a car driven by a Jewish man struck and killed a black child. - Chris Nee, recipient of a $10,000 prize for children's animation for an episode of Nickelodeon's Little Bill about a child overcoming his fear of a hearing-impaired store clerk by learning some sign language. (AP)