'Beast' best at fest: unusual debut is tops at Sundance.(Sundance Film Festival)

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Two well-received Fox Searchlight pickups emerged big winners at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival on Saturday night: "Beasts of the Southern Wild," Benh Zeitlin's imaginative magical-realist debut about a young girl's unique upbringing in southern Louisiana, drew the grand jury prize in the dramatic competition, while the audience award in the same category went to "The Surrogate," Ben Lewin's heartfelt, fact-based dramedy about Mark O'Brien's journey to experience sex as a polio survivor.

On the U.S. documentary side, the top awards went to a pair of hard-hitting films, both about failures of American institutions: Audiences voted their award to Kirby Dick's "The Invisible War," an examination of sexual assault in the military, while the grand jury prize went to "The House I Live In," Eugene …