28th Film Independent Spirit Award Winners

Thanks to Spain's press, yesterday I learned that Michael Haneke was not going to attend the premiere of his Mozart opera Cosi Fan Tutte on Saturday because he was going to be in Los Angeles to attend the Oscars. What they didn't mention at all is that he was also going to be in the Spirit Awards, but he was there to receive the honors for his film. Great.

As we are about to close the American award season it is not surprising that Silver Linings Playbook was the big winner with four awards but the best news is that The Sessions was honored with two awards for the main actors.

Winners are in *BLUE.

11/27/13
Today actors Anna Kendrick, Zoe Saldana and Common presented the nominees in a press conference at The W Hotel in Hollywood. In these awards only Film Independent members vote to determine the winners.

The live-to-tape Awards ceremony will take place on Saturday, February 23 and will premier later that evening on IFC at 10:00 pm ET/PT. So we will have to learn winners on twitter again, just like today we had to learn nominations from organizers live tweets.

It's kind of strange that nowadays a film event does not stream live, as those that could be interested in watching live have to resign to use social media to learn nominations/awards live and we will do it to most likely skip the later TV broadcast.

Moonrise Kingdom and Silver Linings Playbook lead with five nominations each, which is understandable; however, how about Matthew McConaughey getting two nominations, one for Magic Mike (?!) and the other for Killer Joe, not really understandable. Seems that we started with the complications as I wonder if Helen Hunt has a supporting role in The Sessions, for me she is one of the two leads so she should be in the Best Actress category, but being considered here for the supporting role makes me think that she has very little possibilities for an Oscar Best Actress nod.

It is remarkable that three of the five directors nominated for the John Cassavettes award are women, but then is kind of sad that they are in the category that honors films with under US$500,000 budgets; still have to admit that there are more female filmmakers nominated in different categories with the most notable exception, Best Feature were all are male directors.

These are the nominees.

Best Feature
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Bernie
Keep The Lights On
Moonrise Kingdom
*Silver Linings Playbook

Best Director
Wes Anderson for Moonrise Kingdom
Julia Loktev for The Loneliest Planet
*David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook
Ira Sachs for Keep the Lights On
Benh Zeitling for Beasts of the Southern Wild

Best Screenplay
Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola for Moonrise Kingdom
Zoe Kazan for Ruby Sparks
Martin McDonagh for Seven Psychopaths
*David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook
Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias for Keep The Lights On

Best First Feature
Lemale et ha'halal (Fill the Void), Rama Burshtein, Israel
Gimme The Loot, Adam Leon
Safety Not Guaranteed, Colin Trevorrow
Sound of My Voice, Zal Batmanglij
*The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky

Best First Screenplay
Rama Burshtein for Lemale et ha'halal (Fill the Void), Israel
*Derek Connolly for Safety Not Guaranteed
Christopher Ford for Robot and Frank
Rashida Jones and Will McCormack for Celeste and Jesse Forever
Jonathan Lisecki for Gayby

John Cassavetes Award (given to film made for a budget under US$500,000)
Breakfast With Curtis, Laura Colella
*Middle of Nowhere, Ava DuVernay
Mosquita y Mari, Aurora Guerrero
Starlet, Sean Baker
The Color Wheel, Alex Ross Perry

Best Cinematography
Yoni Brook for Valley of Saints
Lol Crawley for Here
*Ben Richardson for Beasts of the Southern Wild
Roman Vasyanov for End of Watch
Robert Yeoman for Moonrise Kingdom

Best Female Lead
Linda Cardellini in Return
Emayatzy Corinealdi in Middle of Nowhere
*Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook
Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild
Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Smashed

Best Supporting Female
Rosemarie DeWitt in Your Sister's Sister
Ann Dowd in Compliance
*Helen Hunt in The Sessions
Brit Marling in Sound of My Voice
Lorraine Toussaint in Middle of Nowhere

Best Male Lead
Jack Black in Bernie
Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook
*John Hawkes in The Sessions
Thure Lindhart in Keep the Lights On
Matthew McConaughey in Killer Joe
Wendell Pierce in Four

Best Supporting Male
*Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike
David Oyelowo in Middle of Nowhere
Michael Pena in End of Watch
Sam Rockwell in 7 Psychopaths
Bruce Willis in Moonrise Kingdom

Best International Film
*Amour, Michael Haneke, France, Austria and Germany
Bir zamanlar Anadolu'da (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Tukey and Bosnia Herzegovina
De Rouille et d’Os (Rust & Bone), Jacques Audiard, Belgium and France
L'enfant d'en haut (Sister), Ursula Meier, Switzerland and France
Rebelle (War Witch), Kim Nguyen, Canada

Best Documentary
How to Survive a Plage, David France
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, Matthew Akers
The Central Park Five, Ken Burns and Sarah Burns
*The Invisible War, Kirby Dick
The Waiting Room, Peter Nicks

Robert Altman Award: Starlet, Sean Baker

16th Piaget Producers Award
Alicia Van Couverign for Nobody Walks
*Mynette Louie for Stones in the Sun
Derrick Tseng for Prince Avalance

19th Someone to Watch Award
David Fenster for Pincus
*Adam Leon for Gimme The Loot
Rebecca Thomas for Electrick Children

18th Stella Artois Truer Than Fiction Award
Lucien Castain-Taylor and Véréna Paravel for Leviathan
*Peter Nicks for The Waiting Room
Jasonyyee Tipet and Elizabeth Mimms for Only The Young

Find Your Audience Award
Sara Lamm and Mary Wigmore for Birth Story
*Laura Colella for Breakfast With Curtis
J. Anderson Mitchell for History of Future Folk

A total of 49 films have nominations and all but 6 films have no distributor yet, with Fox Searchlight topping the ranking with 9 nominated films; but, as always, is The Weinstein Company the one that captures my attention as only has ONE film nominated but is not other than Silver Linings Playbook that collected five nods. If you wish to read the official press release go here and to check stats about the nominees use the link to a pdf file. But if you wish to read about each film go here.

Among all the nominees we have one film that has lesbian-interest, Mosquita y Mari, one with clear gay-interest, Keep the Lights On and another with some gay-interest, Gayby. I was not aware that non-American films can be nominated as is surprising to find an Israel produced film among the nominees.

Nevertheless the most interesting category for me is the International Film as has to be really hard to choose between films by Haneke, Audiard, Ceylan and Meier, all directors that I closely follow as highly enjoy watching their films.

These nominations not necessarily reflect possible Oscar nominations as not many independent films make it to the Oscar, nevertheless believe there is at least one performance that could be considered for Oscar, John Hawkes in The Sessions. Still there is another possibility, Silver Linings Playbook getting some recognition mainly because WHO is behind the film, but also know that Oscar usually does not honor comedies.

To see the video with the nominations announcement go here.

Photos

Michael Haneke interview