The documentary “No Other Land,” the coming-of-age film “Dìdi” and the Netflix series “Baby Reindeer” were among the early winners at the 40th Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday.
The annual awards ceremony held in a beachside tent in Santa Monica, California, is the shaggier, more irreverent sister to the Academy Awards, celebrating the best in independent film and television.
Oscar nominees like Mikey Madison, Demi Moore, Sebastian Stan and Colman Domingo were among those in attendance.
Host Aidy Bryant called it “Hollywood’s third or fourth biggest night,” returning to host the proceedings for the second year.
“It has been a great year for film and a bad year for human life,” Bryant said.
The “Saturday Night Live” alum kicked off the event ribbing some of the nominees, like Emma Stone.
“Emma was a producer on four nominated projects tonight,” Bryant said. “But even more importantly, her hair is short now.”
Bryant also made a plea to anyone watching the show, in the audience or on the YouTube livestream, to help rebuild Los Angeles after the wildfires. She pointed to a QR code that appeared on the livestream to make donations to the Film Independent Emergency Filmmaker Relief Fund, providing grants to alumni impacted by the wildfires.
“My Old Ass” star Maisy Stella was among the early winners of the event, in the breakthrough performance category. The documentary prize went to “No Other Land,” the lauded film by a Palestinian-Israeli collective about the destruction of a village in the West Bank which doesn’t have distribution. It’s also a strong Oscar contender in a competitive category. The filmmakers were not in attendance to accept the award.
Sean Wang accepted the best first feature prize for “Dìdi.” He said it was special to be sharing the stage with one of his stars, Joan Chen, who was also nominated for the same award 25 years ago for “Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl.”
The Netflix phenomenon “Baby Reindeer” also picked up several prizes, for actors Jessica Gunning and Nava Mau.
Mau, who is trans, spoke about the importance of actors sticking together “as we move into this next chapter.”
“We don’t know what is going to happen, but we do know our power,” Mau said. “We are the people and our labor is everything.”
Oscar front-runner “Anora” is one of the most nominated films of the night, as is Jane Schoenbrun’s psychological horror “I Saw the TV Glow.” Both got six nominations, including best feature and best director.
Also nominated for best feature film were RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s “Nickel Boys,” Greg Kwedar’s incarceration drama “Sing Sing” and Coralie Fargeat’s body horror “The Substance.”
Madison, who surprisingly triumphed over Moore last weekend at the BAFTAs, is among the lead actor nominees. Her competition includes Moore, for “The Substance,” Stan, for playing a young Donald Trump in “The Apprentice” and Domingo for his turn as an incarcerated man in “Sing Sing.”
Acting categories for the Spirit Awards are gender neutral and include 10 spots each. In the supporting category, Oscar front-runner Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”) is up against “Anora’s” Yura Borisov.
The winners of the show sometimes overlap significantly with the Oscars, as in the “Everything Everywhere All At Once” year, and sometimes hardly at all. Last year’s awards season champion “Oppenheimer” was too expensive to qualify, and the top Spirit Awards winners were “Past Lives” and “American Fiction.”
The awards limit eligibility to productions with budgets of $30 million or less, meaning more expensive productions like “Wicked” and “Dune: Part Two” were not in the running.
Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press
