Spirit Award Nods: "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" and "Minari" lead the nominations
Tuesday, January 26, 2021 at 1:07PM
NATHANIEL R in Barry Jenkins, Chloe Zhao, Eliza Hittman, Kelly Reichardt, Lee Isaac Chung, Spirit Awards, precursor awards

Chauncy and Barry helping announce the Spirit nominationsby Nathaniel R

Nominations for the 36th annual Independent Spirit Awards have been announced. Spirit winners Olivia Wilde (Booksmart) and Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) as well as actress Laverne Cox announced the nominations. 

BEST FEATURE

A Full list of Film Independent Spirit nominees and commentary follow after the jump...

To be eligible for the Spirits your production budget needs to be under $22 million. Still. Should a low budget alone shouldn't qualify you?

Ma Rainey -- which we love so this isn't a complaint about qualify -- is, after all, an in-house all-star Netflix production. Netflix isn't exactly "indie" even though they pick up a lot of indie product. Promising Young Woman and Sound of Metal were the obvious misses here in the top category given their nominations elsewhere. Other films that scored multiple nominations that missed the big category were The Assistant, Miss Juneteenth, and I Carry You With Me. STIFFED ALTOGETHER? Some notable eligible productions that received zero nominations: The Nest, Relic, I'm thinking of ending things, Swallow, Fourteen, Pieces of a Woman, and The Surrogate (most of which had at least one nomination at the semi-parallel East Coast indie prizes the Gothams). Vast of Night is also missing but, due to festival appearances, it was eligible last year.

BEST DIRECTOR

Emerald Fennel's cameo in her own film "Promising Young Woman"

Female filmmakers really lead the conversation this year, with all of these women frequently honored in critics awards before this and/or at the Gothams. But happy to see Lee Isaac Chung here as his direction of Minari has not been getting the credit it deserves; this is only his second notable honor as a director after the Gold List honor yesterday.

BEST FIRST FEATURE

Nine Days opted out of the current awards season by moving its release well into 2021... but at the Spirits you can become eligible merely with festival releases which is what happened there via Sundance in January of 2020. 

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD – Films made for under $500,000. Award gose to the writer, director, and producer 

This can be a good category to discover things you've never heard of. Or prompt you to see things you have heard about but haven't gotten around to (hi, Lingua Franca)

BEST SCREENPLAY

Good category

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY 

Yay, Palm Springs. People aren't taking it seriously because it's a comedy but it's a great comedy so it should be taken seriously. 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

cool nomination for "She Dies Tomorrow" and its trippy siren light color gels

Love that this category stays indie. A great place to see young cinematographers on the rise. Kirchner also shot Small Axe so he's been winning lots of praise this year. Richards is surely headed to an Oscar nomination this year after receiving lots of industry attention, including an ASC nomination for The Rider. 

BEST EDITING

It's always interesting when a John Cassavettes nominated picture shows up in one of the main categories. VERY happy about the I Carry You With Me nomination, as well, as that was surely a difficult blending storytelling task via the editing.

BEST FEMALE LEAD

It's the one category that got an extra nomination slot! We don't know the Spirit Awards rules so we'll assume there was a fifth place tie or close enough.

BEST MALE LEAD

 

Adarsh Gourav is the surprise here but he is wonderful in The White Tiger.

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE 

Wow. So happy for Valerie Mahaffey as that is very unexpected given the lack of buzz for her or the film.  

BEST SUPPORTING MALE 

Very surprised to see Colman Domingo here (though I'm a huge fan). And Benedict Wong too. It's nice to see him step away from his teeny-tiny but surely lucrative role in the MCU and do an indie. Raci might be headed to an Oscar nominatiom, and Turman could do, if some of the category fraudsters get out of the way. 

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD – Given to one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast

BEST DOCUMENTARY 

Two of these (Collective & The Mole Agent) are double-eligible at the Oscars this year for Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature

 

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM 

Quo Vadis, Aida is starting to look like a formidable Oscar contender

Only Bacurau and The Disciple are ineligible for Oscar's upcoming International Feature race. 

BEST NEW SCRIPTED SERIES

The Spirits have added TV awards for the first time. Five of them to be exact. 

BEST NEW NON-SCRIPTED OR DOCUMENTARY SERIES

I love We're Here so sooooo much. It's so smart and humane and non-hyper about itself. 

BEST MALE PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES 

BEST FEMALE PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES 

BEST ENSEMBLE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES 

BONNIE AWARD – This prize recognizes a midcareer female director with a $ grant

PRODUCERS AWARD – Another prize with grant $ as the reward 

They never mention specific films for this prize so here's  a few detail. Durrett is from Ohio originally and has been producing for a handful of years now. Her highest profile project to date was Save Yourselves (2020), a sci-fi comedy. Lucas Joaquin is from Georgia originally and has been producing for about a decade. He started very strong out of the gate with both  Beasts of the Southern Wild and Keep the Lights On (2012). Recent projects include Evening Hour, Seelah and the Spades, and Blow the Man Down. Gerry Kim has worked extensively in location management for television and his producing career stared with documentaries a dozen or so years ago. His most recent project was the Mexican submission for the Oscar I'm No Longer Here which is currently streaming on Netflix. 

 

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD – Another grant $ prize this one to directors that still haven’t really broken through.

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD – Grant $ for an emerging documentarian 

THE NOMINATION VIDEO

 

We love Barry (who appeared with his adorably large pup, "Chauncy Wang-Jenkins") but he sure could you pointers on how to announce a list of names from Laverne Cox, who enunciated each name clearly and passionately as if it was super important to the nominees themselves... and it is! 

What were you most surprised about seeing these nominees?

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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