After several years of increasing overlap with the Academy Awards, the Independent Film Spirit Awards will supply a counterpoint to the Oscars at its annual ceremony on Saturday.
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On the eve of #OscarsSoWhite, diversity took center stage at the 2016 Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, where three of the four acting awards tonight went to actors of color.
Room star Brie Larson, who is the front runner for the best actress Oscar, won the best actress Spirit award.
“There is transgender talent”.
“This is insane”, a visibly moved Vikander said, hailing her co-star Eddie Redmayne: “Thank you for being the best acting partner”.
Only one best-picture nominee is up for the Spirit Awards’ top honor: the newspaper drama “Spotlight”.
This year, Jessica Chastain (long a champion of independent film) served as the honorary chair at the Spirit Awards.
Spirit Award host Kumail Nanjiani, who is Pakistani-American, introduced himself and his co-host, openly gay comedian Kate McKinnon, as “a gay woman and a Pakistani man. Or as Hollywood thinks of us, a straight woman and her IT guy”.
Tom McCarthy, actor, director and now Academy Award-winning screenwriter for his movie, “Spotlight”, stepped onstage last night holding his gold statue for Best Original Screenplay.
Nicole Rocklin’s mom tried to be patient as she waited for her daughter to arrive at trendy Palihouse in West Hollywood on Sunday night. In Attah’s version of the story, “We were playing football in front of a school, and a white man came and said we need some boys for a movie”. It’s raked in more than million since its release in early November, according to Box Office Mojo estimates, and it’s now won 58 awards since its release, including a BAFTA Award for best screenplay, a SAG Award for best ensemble cast, and the AFI Award for best picture.
Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Look of Silence”, centered on the Indonesian genocide of the 1960s, took the documentary trophy.
“Quite honestly, we need studios like this who are going to step up when the other studios won’t”, said McCarthy, with several of the reporters the films is based on in the crowd.
Mya Taylor won the best supporting actress for her performance in comedy-dram “Tangerine”. In 1986, it was renamed Independent Spirit Awards.
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He said: “It was hard, I literally I had a baby one month before I started filming, my first son”.
