“Anora” won Best Feature at the the 40th Annual Film Independent Spirit Awards, which took place on Saturday afternoon in Santa Monica and was hosted for the second year in a row by Aidy Bryant. “Anora’s” Indie Spirit win follows its recent triumphs at the DGA and PGA awards and boosts its chances for Oscar glory next week. “Anora” also won Best Director for Sean Baker and Best Lead Performance for Mikey Madison. Repeating her victory at the BAFTAs, Madison beat Demi Moore, who had been considered the solid frontrunner.
In many ways, the Indie Spirit Awards followed a pattern it has shown in recent years: Anytime its voters can give a statuette to an Oscar-nominated film or performance, they do. This year’s Spirit nominations included Oscar nominees in seven different categories — and in every one of those categories, the Academy-approved entry won.
Aside from the three big wins for “Anora,” that means that “A Real Pain” won awards for supporting actor Kieran Culkin and screenwriter Jesse Eisenberg; “No Other Land” won in the documentary category; and the Latvian animated film “Flow” won in the international-feature category, which at the Indie Spirits is also open to international English-language films like “Hard Truths.”
In categories where Oscar nominees weren’t an option, “Dìdi” scooped up Best First Feature and First Screenplay awards. “Nickel Boys” won for its cinematography, and “September 5” won for film editing.
Indie Spirit voters are a mixture of film professionals and fans who pay to participate, and they didn’t always focus on the same films as the Motion Picture Academy. In the first two and a half decades after the awards were launched in 1985, the Film Independent Spirit Awards prided themselves on being an alternative to the Oscars: They were the show that would give the top award to movies like “After Hours,” “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and “Election,” movies that would never be nominated for Best Picture by the Academy. And later, they would go with “Brokeback Mountain” over “Crash,” “Little Miss Sunshine” instead of “The Departed,” “Black Swan” instead of “The King’s Speech.”
But a little more than a decade ago, the Oscars began to get more indie and the two organizations began to regularly match, beginning with “The Artist” in 2012, followed two years later by a four-year streak in which the Indie Spirits predicted the Oscar winner with “12 Years a Slave” in 2015, “Birdman” in 2016, “Spotlight” in 2017 and “Moonlight” in 2018. Since then, Indie Spirit voters have tended to go for likely Oscar winners like “Nomadland,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and now “Anora.”
The question going into Saturday’s show wasn’t whether the voters would embrace what has seemed to be the Spirit Awards’ path of least resistance by choosing the high-profile Oscar nominees, but whether they would find a way to give their choices a distinctive personality — if they’re not going to provide a cooler, more adventurous alternative to the Oscars, at least a little spin on what we may see at the Dolby Theatre in eight days.
Maybe the love for “Dìdi” helped them do that, and certainly the cinematography award to “Nickel Boys” and the editing one for “September 5” cast a welcome light on two richly deserving films. But this year’s Indie Spirit Awards may go down not as the show that gave “Anora” a bunch more awards than it had already won, but as the one that let Sean Baker deliver his lengthy acceptance speech decrying the sorry state of independent film finance for creators.
In the TV categories, meanwhile, voters decided that it’s never too late to give trophies to “Shogun” and “Baby Reindeer.” The former show won the Best New Scripted Series category and the latter had awards go to all three of its main actors: Richard Gadd, Jessica Gunning and Nava Mau, the latter in an upset over Tadanobu Asano and Moeka Hoshi for “Shōgun” and Patti LuPone for “Agatha All Along,” among others.
To be eligible for the Spirit Awards, a film must have a total budget of less than $30 million and must have been exhibited commercially or shown at one of seven film festivals. Documentaries and international films can only qualify in those specific categories.
Here is the complete list of nominees. Winners are indicated by *WINNER.
Best Feature
“Anora” *WINNER
“I Saw the TV Glow”
“Nickel Boys”
“Sing Sing”
“The Substance”
Best First Feature
“Dìdi” *WINNER
“In the Summers”
“Janet Planet”
“The Piano Lesson”
“Problemista”
John Cassavetes Award
(Best feature made for under $1,000,000)
“Big Boys”
“Ghostlight”
“Girls Will Be Girls” *WINNER
“Jazzy”
“The People’s Joker”
Best Director
Ali Abbasi, “The Apprentice”
Sean Baker, “Anora” *WINNER
Brady Corbet, “The Brutalist”
Alonso Ruizpalacios, “La Cocina”
Jane Schoenbrun, “I Saw the TV Glow”
Best Screenplay
Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, “Heretic”
Jesse Eisenberg, “A Real Pain” *WINNER
Megan Park, “My Old Ass”
Aaron Schimberg, “A Different Man”
Jane Schoenbrun, “I Saw the TV Glow”
Best First Screenplay
Joanna Arnow, “The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed”
Annie Baker, “Janet Planet”
India Donaldson, “Good One”
Julio Torres, “Problemista”
Sean Wang, “Dìdi” *WINNER
Best Lead Performance
Amy Adams, “Nightbitch”
Ryan Destiny, “The Fire Inside”
Colman Domingo, “Sing Sing”
Keith Kupferer, “Ghostlight”
Mikey Madison, “Anora” *WINNER
Demi Moore, “The Substance”
Hunter Schafer, “Cuckoo”
Justice Smith, “I Saw the TV Glow”
June Squibb, “Thelma”
Sebastian Stan, “The Apprentice”
Best Supporting Performance
Yura Borisov, “Anora”
Joan Chen, “Dìdi”
Kieran Culkin, “A Real Pain” *WINNER
Danielle Deadwyler, “The Piano Lesson”
Carol Kane, “Between the Temples”
Karren Karagulian, “Anora”
Kani Kusruti, “Girls Will Be Girls”
Jack Haven, “I Saw the TV Glow”
Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, “Sing Sing”
Adam Pearson, “A Different Man”
Best Breakthrough Performance
Isaac Krasner, “Big Boys”
Katy O’Brian, “Love Lies Bleeding”
Mason Alexander Park, “National Anthem”
René Pérez Joglar, “In the Summers”
Maisy Stella, “My Old Ass” *WINNER
Best Cinematography
Dinh Duy Hung, “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell”
Jomo Fray, “Nickel Boys” *WINNER
Maria von Hausswolff, “Janet Planet”
Juan Pablo Ramírez, “La Cocina”
Rina Yang, “The Fire Inside”
Best Editing
Laura Colwell, Vanara Taing, “Jazzy”
Olivier Bugge Coutté, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, “The Apprentice”
Anne McCabe, “Nightbitch”
Hansjörg Weissbrich, “September 5” *WINNER
Arielle Zakowski, “Dìdi”
Robert Altman Award
(Given to one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast)
“His Three Daughters”
Director: Azazel Jacobs
Casting Director: Nicole Arbusto
Ensemble Cast: Jovan Adepo, Jasmine Bracey, Carrie Coon, Jose Febus, Rudy Galvan, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Randy Ramos Jr., Jay O. Sanders
Best Documentary
“Gaucho Gaucho”
“Hummingbirds”
“No Other Land” *WINNER
“Patrice: The Movie”
“Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
Best International Feature Film
“All We Imagine as Light”
“Black Dog”
“Flow” *WINNER
“Green Border”
“Hard Truths”
Producers Award
Alex Coco
Sarah Winshall *WINNER
Zoë Worth
Someone to Watch Award
Nicholas Colia, Director of “Griffin in Summer”
Sarah Friedland, Director of “Familiar Touch” *WINNER
Pham Thien An, Director of “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell”
Truer Than Fiction Award
Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie, Directors of “Sugarcane”
Carla Gutiérrez, Director of “Frida”
Rachel Elizabeth Seed, Director of “A Photographic Memory” * WINNER
Best New Non-Scripted or Documentary Series
“Erased: WW2’s Heroes of Color”
“Hollywood Black” *WINNER
“Photographer”
“Ren Faire”
“Social Studies”
Best New Scripted Series
“Baby Reindeer”
“Diarra From Detroit”
“English Teacher”
“Fantasmas”
“Shōgun” *WINNER
Best Lead Performance in a New Scripted Series
Brian Jordan Alvarez, “English Teacher”
Richard Gadd, “Baby Reindeer” *WINNER
Lily Gladstone, “Under the Bridge”
Kathryn Hahn, “Agatha All Along”
Cristin Milioti, “The Penguin”
Julianne Moore, “Mary & George”
Hiroyuki Sanada, “Shōgun”
Anna Sawai, “Shōgun”
Andrew Scott, “Ripley”
Julio Torres, “Fantasmas”
Best Supporting Performance in a New Scripted Series
Tadanobu Asano, “Shōgun”
Enrico Colantoni, “English Teacher”
Betty Gilpin, “Three Women”
Chloe Guidry, “Under the Bridge”
Moeka Hoshi, “Shōgun”
Stephanie Koenig, “English Teacher”
Patti LuPone, “Agatha All Along”
Nava Mau, “Baby Reindeer” *WINNER
Ruth Negga, “Presumed Innocent”
Brian Tee, “Expats”
Best Breakthrough Performance in a New Scripted Series
Jessica Gunning, “Baby Reindeer” *WINNER
Diarra Kilpatrick, “Diarra From Detroit”
Joe Locke, “Agatha All Along”
Megan Stott, “Penelope”
Hoa Xuande, “The Sympathizer”
Best Ensemble Cast in a New Scripted Series
“How to Die Alone”
Ensemble Cast: Melissa DuPrey, Jaylee Hamidi, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, Arkie Kandola, Elle Lorraine, Michelle McLeod, Chris “CP” Powell, Conrad Ricamora, Natasha Rothwell, Jocko Sims
