Expatriate Australian writer and director Ben Lewin has picked up a prize at the Sundance film festival.

Lewin's film The Surrogate, about a disabled man who wants to lose his virginity, won the audience award in the US dramatic competition at the festival, which has just wound up.

The film was shot by Australian cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson, who has worked on the Australian films Sleeping Beauty, Romulus My Father and Shine.

The film's cast, which includes John Hawkes, Helen Hunt and William H. Macey, picked up a special jury prize.

In the film Hawkes plays a 38-year-old man left paralysed and relying on an iron lung after contracting polio as a child.

After talking to his priest (Macey) he contacts a professional sex surrogate (Hunt), a trained sex therapist who has experience working with disabled clients.

The film, which received a standing ovation at its premiere, is based on the real story of poet and journalist Mark O'Brien.

Fox Searchlight has reportedly paid $US6 million for worldwide rights.

Lewin, 65, was born in Poland and moved to Melbourne with his family when he was three. He contracted polio when he was six and, like O'Brien, spent time in an iron lung.

In Australia, he worked as a criminal lawyer before moving into film and television, including writing and directing the Australian series Rafferty's Rules, the telemovie The Dunera Boys and the film Lucky Break.

He has lived in the US since 1994.

The top Sundance jury prizes went to the fantastical Beasts of the Southern Wild and the documentary The House I Live In.