Here Are The 2023 Nominations of The Film Independent Spirit Awards

Posted on December 5, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The nominations of the Independent Spirit Awards were announced today. While the Spirits are definitely an Oscar precursor, it’s important to remember that some of the year’s big contenders — Oppenheimer, Maestro, Rustin, Nyad, Barbie, Killers Of The Flower Moon – -are not eligible for the Spirits.

Of the film nominated for Best Feature, May December, Past Lives, and American Fiction seem to be the most likely to also show up when the Oscar nominations are announced next year.

Here are the nominees! The winners will be announced on February 25th, 2024!

BEST FEATURE (Award given to the producer)
All of Us Strangers – Producers: Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Sarah Harvey
American Fiction – Producers: Cord Jefferson, Jermaine Johnson, Nikos Karamigios, Ben LeClair
May December – Producers: Jessica Elbaum, Will Ferrell, Grant S. Johnson, Pamela Koffler, Tyler W. Konney, Sophie Mas, Natalie Portman, Christine Vachon
Passages – Producers: Michel Merkt, Saïd Ben Saïd
Past Lives – Producers: David Hinojosa, Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon
We Grown Now – Producers: Minhal Baig, Joe Pirro

BEST FIRST FEATURE (Award given to director and producer)
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt – Director: Raven Jackson, Producers: Maria Altamirano, Mark Ceryak, Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski
Chronicles of a Wandering Saint – Director: Tomás Gómez Bustillo, Producers: Gewan Brown, Amanda Freedman
Earth Mama – Director/Producer: Savanah Leaf, Producers: Sam Bisbee, Shirley O’Connor, Medb Riordan, Cody Ryder
A Thousand and One – Director: A.V. Rockwell, Producers: Julia Lebedev, Rishi Rajani, Eddie Vaisman, Lena Waithe, Brad Weston
Upon Entry – Directors: Alejandro Rojas, Juan Sebastián Vásquez, Producers: Sergio Adrià, Carlos Juárez, Alba Sotorra, Carles Torras, Xosé Zapata

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD – Given to the best feature made for under $1,000,000 (Award given to the writer, director and producer)
The Artifice Girl – Director/Writer: Franklin Ritch, Producers: Aaron B. Koontz, Ashleigh Snead
Cadejo Blanco – Director/Writer/Producer: Justin Lerner, Producers: Mauricio Escobar, Ryan Friedkin, Jack Patrick Hurley
Fremont – Director/Writer: Babak Jalali, Writer: Carolina Cavalli, Producers: Rachael Fung, Chris Martin, Marjaneh Moghimi, George Rush, Sudnya Shroff, Laura Wagner
Rotting in the Sun – Director/Writer: Sebastián Silva, Writer: Pedro Peirano, Producer: Jacob Wasserman
The Unknown Country – Director/Writer/Producer: Morrisa Maltz, Writer: Lily Gladstone, Writers/Producers: Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, Vanara Taing, Producers: Katherine Harper, Laura Heberton, Tommy Heitkamp

BEST DIRECTOR
Andrew Haigh – All of Us Strangers
Todd Haynes – May December
William Oldroyd – Eileen
Ira Sachs – Passages
Celine Song – Past Lives

BEST SCREENPLAY
David Hemingson – The Holdovers
Cord Jefferson – American Fiction
Laura Moss & Brendan J. O’Brien – Birth/Rebirth
Emma Seligman & Rachel Sennott – Bottoms
Celine Song – Past Lives

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
Samy Burch; Story by Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik – May December
Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman & Ben Platt – Theater Camp
Tomás Gómez Bustillo – Chronicles of a Wandering Saint
Laurel Parmet – The Starling Girl
Alejandro Rojas & Juan Sebastián Vásquez – Upon Entry

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE
Jessica Chastain – Memory
Greta Lee – Past Lives
Trace Lysette – Monica
Natalie Portman – May December
Judy Reyes – Birth/Rebirth
Franz Rogowski – Passages
Andrew Scott – All of Us Strangers
Teyana Taylor – A Thousand and One
Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction
Teo Yoo – Past Lives

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE
Erika Alexander – American Fiction
Sterling K. Brown – American Fiction
Noah Galvin – Theater Camp
Anne Hathaway – Eileen
Glenn Howerton – BlackBerry
Marin Ireland – Eileen
Charles Melton – May December
Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers
Catalina Saavedra – Rotting in the Sun
Ben Whishaw – Passages

BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE
Marshawn Lynch – Bottoms
Atibon Nazaire – Mountains
Tia Nomore – Earth Mama
Dominic Sessa – The Holdovers
Anaita Wali Zada – Fremont

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Katelin Arizmendi – Monica
Eigil Bryld – The Holdovers
Jomo Fray – All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
Pablo Lozano – Chronicles of a Wandering Saint
Pat Scola – We Grown Now

BEST EDITING
Santiago Cendejas, Gabriel Díaz, Sofía Subercaseaux – Rotting in the Sun
Stephanie Filo – We Grown Now
Daniel Garber – How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Jon Philpot – Theater Camp
Emanuele Tiziani – Upon Entry

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD – Given to one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast
Showing Up
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Casting Director: Gayle Keller
Ensemble Cast: André Benjamin, Hong Chau, Judd Hirsch, Heather Lawless, James Le Gros, John Magaro, Matt Malloy, Amanda Plummer, Maryann Plunkett, Denzel Rodriguez, Michelle Williams

BEST DOCUMENTARY (Award given to the director and producer)
Bye Bye Tiberias – Director: Lina Soualem, Producer: Jean-Marie Nizan
Four Daughters – Director: Kaouther Ben Hania, Producer: Nadim Cheikhrouha
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project – Directors/Producers: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson, Producer: Tommy Oliver
Kokomo City – Director: D. Smith, Producers: Bill Butler, Harris Doran
The Mother of All Lies – Director/Producer: Asmae El Moudir

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM (Award given to the director)
Anatomy of a Fall (France) – Director: Justine Triet
Godland (Denmark/Iceland) – Director: Hlynur Pálmason
Mami Wata (Nigeria) – Director: C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi
Tótem (Mexico) – Director: Lila Avilés
The Zone of Interest (United Kingdom, Poland, USA) – Director: Jonathan Glazer

PRODUCERS AWARD
 Presented by Bulleit Frontier Whiskey – The Producers Award, now in its 27th year, honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity and vision required to produce quality independent films.

Rachael Fung
Graham Swon
Monique Walton

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD
The Someone to Watch Award, now in its 30th year, recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition.

Joanna Arnow – Director of The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
Laura Moss – Director of Birth/Rebirth
Monica Sorelle – Director of Mountains

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD 
The Truer Than Fiction Award, now in its 29th year, is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant recognition.

Set Hernandez – Director of unseen
Jesse Short Bull, Laura Tomaselli – Director of Lakota Nation vs. United States
Sierra Urich – Director of Joonam

BEST NEW NON-SCRIPTED OR DOCUMENTARY SERIES (Award given to the Creator, Executive Producer, Co-Executive Producer)
Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court
Executive Producers: Vinnie Malhotra, Aaron Saidman, Eli Holzman, Dawn Porter
Dear Mama
Executive Producers: Lasse Järvi, Quincy ‘QD3’ Jones III, Staci Robinson, Nelson George, Charles D. King, Peter Nelson, Adel ‘Future’ Nur, Jamal Joseph, Ted Skillman, Allen Hughes, Steve Berman, Marc Cimino, Jody Gerson, John Janick, Nicholas Ferrall, Nigel Sinclair
Murder in Big Horn
Executive Producers: Matthew Galkin, Vinnie Malhotra
Co-Executive Producers: Lisa Kalikow, Joshua Levine
Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence
Executive Producers: Mindy Goldberg, Dan Cogan, Liz Garbus, Jon Bardin, Zach Heinzerling, Krista Parris, Daniel Barban Levin, Felicia Rosario
Co-Executive Producer: Julie Gaither
Wrestlers
Executive Producers: Greg Whiteley, Ryan O’Dowd
Co-Executive Producers: Alejandro Melendez, Adam Leibowitz

BEST NEW SCRIPTED SERIES (Award given to the Creator, Executive Producer, Co-Executive Producer)
Beef
Creator/Executive Producer: Lee Sung Jin
Executive Producers: Steven Yeun, Ali Wong, Jake Schreier, Ravi Nandan, Alli Reich
Co-Executive Producers: Alice Ju, Carrie Kemper
Dreaming Whilst Black
Creator/Executive Producer: Adjani Salmon
Creators: Maximilian Evans, Natasha Jatania, Laura Seixas
Executive Producers: Tanya Qureshi, Dhanny Joshi, Bal Samra, Thomas Stogdon
I’m a Virgo
Creator/Executive Producer: Boots Riley
Executive Producers: Tze Chun, Michael Ellenberg, Lindsey Springer, Jharrel Jerome, Rebecca Rivo
Co-Executive Producers: Marcus Gardley, Carver Karaszewski
Jury Duty
Creators/Executive Producers: Lee Eisenberg, Gene Stupnitsky
Executive Producers: David Bernad, Ruben Fleischer, Nicholas Hatton, Cody Heller, Todd Schulman, Jake Szymanski, Andrew Weinberg
Slip
Creator/Executive Producer: Zoe Lister-Jones
Executive Producers: Ro Donnelly, Dakota Johnson, Katie O’Connell Marsh, David Fortier, Ivan Schneeberg

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Emma Corrin – A Murder at the End of the World
Dominique Fishback – Swarm
Betty Gilpin – Mrs. Davis
Jharrel Jerome – I’m a Virgo
Zoe Lister-Jones – Slip
Bel Powley – A Small Light
Bella Ramsey – The Last of Us
Ramón Rodríguez – Will Trent
Ali Wong – Beef
Steven Yeun – Beef

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Murray Bartlett – The Last of Us
Billie Eilish – Swarm
Jack Farthing – Rain Dogs
Nick Offerman – The Last of Us
Adina Porter – The Changeling
Lewis Pullman – Lessons in Chemistry
Benny Safdie – The Curse
Luke Tennie – Shrinking
Olivia Washington – I’m a Virgo
Jessica Williams – Shrinking

BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Clark Backo – The Changeling
Aria Mia Loberti – All the Light We Cannot See
Adjani Salmon – Dreaming Whilst Black
Keivonn Montreal Woodard – The Last of Us
Kara Young – I’m a Virgo

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Jury Duty
Ensemble Cast: Alan Barinholtz, Susan Berger, Cassandra Blair, David Brown, Kirk Fox, Ross Kimball, Pramode Kumar, Trisha LaFache, Mekki Leeper, James Marsden, Edy Modica, Kerry O’Neill, Rashida Olayiwola, Whitney Rice, Maria Russell, Ishmel Sahid, Ben Seaward, Ron Song, Evan Williams

Film Review: The Circle (dir by James Ponsoldt)

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, I got off work early and I finally saw The Circle!

The Circle is a film that I’ve been curious about for a while. It’s based on a novel by Dave Eggers, a book that I absolutely loved when I first read it. It stars Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, Patton Oswalt, and John Boyega. It’s directed by James Ponsoldt, who may not be a household name but who has previously directed such beloved films as The Spectacular Now and The End of The Tour. It sounded like a film to which everyone should have been looking forward but instead, even with Watson appearing in the blockbuster Beauty and the Beast at the same time, The Circle opened with very little fanfare.

Then the reviews came out and, with a few notable exceptions, they were all negative. I did a little research and I discovered that, though filming was initially completed in 2015, The Circle spent a year and a half sitting on the shelf. In January of this year, 16 months after shooting wrapped, a few scenes were refilmed. That’s never a good sign. One gets the feeling that, if not for John Boyega’s role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the excitement over Emma Watson starring in Beauty and the Beast, The Circle probably would have ended up going straight to VOD.

But here’s the thing. I loved the book. The book managed to put a new spin on the otherwise tired topic of how social media has changed our way of looking at the world. The book was an Orwellian masterpiece, an homage to 1984 by a writer who, as opposed to most people who are currently claiming to appreciate the novel’s dark vision, understood what George Orwell was actually saying.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the easier it was for me to assume that most critics probably missed the point of the movie. It was entirely possible, I decided, that the negative reaction to The Circle had to do with audiences not knowing how to deal with a movie that truly challenged their assumptions. Naively, I assumed that the story and the themes of the novel had been brought to the screen and the critics couldn’t handle it.

Well, as I said earlier, I finally saw The Circle for myself and it turns out that I was wrong. The Circle is an absolute mess. Despite being co-written by Dave Eggers, this film actually has very little in common with the novel that it’s based on. The novel was a sharply satiric portrait of a world that has become brainwashed by technology and social media. The movie is a nagging anti-internet screed that would have felt out-of-touch in 2002. The book ends with a powerful “and he loved Big Brother” moment. The movie ends on a note that feels so completely false that you just know it was studio mandated.

Emma Watson plays Mae Hubbard, a recent college grad whose degree in Art History is pretty much going to waste. (Speaking as the proud recipient of an Art History degree, I can verify that the film gets this detail absolutely right.) Through a college friend named Annie (Karen Gillian, for once not having to disguise her Scottish accent), Mae gets a job working for The Circle, an all-powerful internet company that is pretty obviously based on Google Plus. Through a series of silly events, Mae becomes the public face of The Circle. The Circle wants to use technology (cameras everywhere, social media addiction, everyone carries tablet, you must have a credit card to join The Circle, oh my!) to do away with the concept of privacy. When everyone is a member of the Circle, no one will be a stranger. No one will have any privacy. Anyone can be found. Anyone can be watched. And, of course, it’ll be easier to tell everyone what to think and who to support…

…and all of this would be shocking if The Circle had been made in a time before Twitter and Facebook.

Anyway! The Circle was founded by three men. Two of them (Tom Hanks, Patton Oswalt) are totally sinister. Oswalt glowers in the background. Hanks appears to channeling Christoph Waltz. Meanwhile, the third man (John Boyega) has become disillusioned with The Circle. He shows up occasionally, standing in the background and watching as Mae does stuff.

Throughout the film, Tom Hanks gives lectures to his employees. They all applaud as he introduced the latest technology from The Circle. These scenes are fun because it looks like Tom Hanks is appearing in a commercial for The Criterion Collection.

Anyway, Mae loves the brave new world but a few people don’t. Her parents (Bill Paxton and Glenne Headly) are skeptical. Though his role is small, Bill Paxton gave a good performance in this, his latest released film. I got a bit emotional watching him, especially as he was playing a character struggling with his own poor health. Ellar Coltrane, of Boyhood fame, plays the other voice of skepticism, Mae’s childhood friend who wants to live off the grid. Coltrane is supposed to be the voice of reason but he gives such a strange and awkward performance that the main thing that comes across is that Luddites are weird.

Actually, with the exception of Bill Paxton and Karen Gillan, it’s hard to think of anyone who actually gives a good performance in The Circle. (This is especially shocking when you consider that, in the past, Ponsoldt has proven himself to be an excellent director when it comes to getting noteworthy work from his cast.) Everyone comes across like they were wishing that they were somewhere else. Emma Watson, in particular, is bad. That said, in her defense, Watson is also totally miscast. Mae is meant to be someone searching for an identity in an overly complicated world but Watson plays her as just being dourly earnest. As played by Watson, Mae’s just the boring person that you dread having to take a class with. Neither Watson nor the film, as a whole, seems to be sure who exactly Mae is. (In the novel, the character works because Mae isn’t meant to be likable. The film, however, tries to have it both ways, making her both a true believer in the Circle and a sympathetic character. It doesn’t work.)

For that matter, the film also appears to be confused as to just why exactly Hanks and Oswalt are villains. We know that we’re supposed to distrust them because Hanks is way too quick to smile and Oswalt is always standing in the background and looking like he’s just deliberately killed all of his Sims. But how evil are they actually supposed to be? What are the stakes? The film doesn’t appear to be sure.

Now, I’m not totally trashing The Circle. There were a few moments that I did like. I enjoyed the scenes that were meant to illustrate the cult-like atmosphere at the Circle. There’s a hilarious scene where two enthusiastic Circle employees interrogate Mae as to why she never told them that she enjoys kayaking. (“I enjoy kayaking! We could have kayaked together!”) And there’s another scene where Hanks and Oswalt talk about how, if countries allow The Circle to run their elections, they could then require everyone to join The Circle and then make voting mandatory. Mandatory Voting is a really terrible idea, the type that is always embraced by people who should know better. I appreciated seeing the idea exposed for being the ticket to totalitarianism that it truly is.

But, for the most part, The Circle was just a mess. Like a lot of cautionary tales (especially ones dealing with the internet), The Circle will probably eventually become a bit of a camp classic. But for now, everyone involved with the film has done better work in the past and, hopefully, will continue to do so in the future.