Elle ;New o rk a' uto Sundance Documentaries Transform Data Into Stories By: Manohla Dargis January 30, 2012 A scene from "The House I Live In: directed by Eugene Jarecki. Over the weekend, "The House I Live In," Eugene Jarecki's heart-heavy investigation into the American war on drugs, nabbed the grand jury prize for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. Mr. Jarecki's other movies include "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," about you know who, and a 2005 grand jury prize winner, "Why We Fight," about the American military industrial complex. Notably, one of this year's jury members was Charles Ferguson, whose documentaries include "No End in Sight" and "Inside Job," and who, like Mr. Jarecki, has a methodological gift for transforming boatloads of information into both political arguments and eminently watchable narratives. Mr. Jarecki's new documentary takes its title from the song, memorably crooned by both Paul Robeson and Frank Sinatra, which compares America with a house we - "all races and religions" - live in. As Mr. Jarecki explains in his voiceover, he came to his latest subject through his relationship with Nannie Jeter, an African- American who worked for his (white) family when he was young. After the drug- related death of her son, Mr. Jarecki found himself wondering what drugs had done to Ms. Jeter's family, a question that quickly found him, as he tells it here, shifting his focus from drugs, their uses and abuses, to the war on drugs. EFTA00591217