Lily Gladstone, Charles Melton win film acting prizes, Robert De Niro goes off book with fiery speech
Celine Song’s Past Lives has won The Gotham Awards honor for Best Feature. The film was nominated for three awards both found its trophy only in the show’s final award of the evening at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.
The yearly kickoff to awards season, the Best Feature winner here has earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination seven out of the last 10 years. Three of those times – 2014’s Birdman, 2016’s Moonlight and 2020’s Nomadland – the Gotham winner won the Academy Award.
Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers led the field with four nominations but went home empty-handed, as did triple nominee The Zone of Interest. A Thousand and One‘s A.V. Rockwell was a surprise winner for the Gotham Breakthrough Director Award, a category that consisted of all female-identifying nominees for the first time in Gotham history.
Anatomy of a Fall, the Cannes Palme d’Or winner this year, was a double winner here taking Best Screenplay and Best International Feature over All of Us Strangers, Poor Things and The Zone of Interest, among others.
May December break out Charles Melton won Outstanding Supporting Performance for the film. The last two winners here, Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and Troy Kotsur (CODA) went on to win the Supporting Actor Oscar.
Speeches were largely traditional and down the line until Robert De Niro’s intro for Killers of the Flower Moon, which received the Gotham Historical Icon & Creator Tribute Honor. While it seemed at first he was having trouble with his speech, he inferred that Apple and/or Gotham had altered it to remove a section that was anti-Trump and anti-news. “How dare they,” he said, and pulled out his speech from his phone and read after the teleprompter version.
“Lying has become just another tool in the charlatan’s arsenal. The former President lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office. And he’s keeping up the pace in his current campaign of retribution. But in all his lies, he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows disrespect by, for example, using Pocahontas as a slur,” said the two-time Oscar winner.
Lily Gladstone, part of the group who accepted the award for Killers, spoke on behalf of the actors saying, “I ask the people in this room, when you have a budget like this, invest it in the people, your film will be better for it.” Shortly after, Gladstone won the Gotham for Outstanding Lead Performance for The Unknown Country.
The trio of television winners were National Geographic’s A Small Light for Breakthrough Series over 40 Minutes, Beef for Breakthrough Series Under 40 Minutes with its star Ali Wong winning Outstanding Performance in a New Series.
Several Gotham Icon & Creator Tribute Awards will be handed out a Cipriani Hall on the 27th, including Bradley Cooper’s Maestro presented by Brian Williams, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie presented by Laura Dern, George C. Wolfe’s Rustin, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon presented by Robert De Niro, Michael Mann’s Ferrari presented by Adam Driver and Ben Affleck’s Air. The Gothams Awards normally recognize lower budgeted independent films, but this year the Gotham Film and Media Institute removed its $35 million budget cap requirement this year for nominees, allowing films like them to receive nominations and special recognition alongside the usual eligible films.
The Gotham’s Sidney Poitier Initiative, which supports The Gotham’s equity programs, also received funding from Moviepass. The Sidney Poitier Initiative fuels the careers of and expands opportunities for trailblazing film and media creators from historically excluded backgrounds.
The Gotham also announced ViacomCBS’ MTV Entertainment Group will continue to underwrite the Gotham EDU Schumacher Cranshaw Scholarship as part of The Gotham EDU Career Development Program. The scholarship is in honor of the legacy of filmmaker Joel Scumacher and MTV Creative Director Sophia Cranshaw, for undergraduate students who identify as Black, Indigenous, People of Color and LGBTQ+. The Gotham EDU Career Development program offers support in the form of classes and mentorship.
Here is the full list of winners.
Best Feature
The Best Feature jury included: Nina Yang Bongiovi, Danielle Deadwyler, Beau Flynn, Edward Shults Trey & Olivia Wilde
Best International Feature
The Best International Feature jury included: Gracija Filipovic, Asher Goldstein, André Holland, Danilea Taplin Lundberg & Giancarlo Nasi
Best Documentary Feature
The Best Documentary jury included: Yoni Golijov, Teddy Leifer, Andrew Rossi, Nanfu Wang & Jamila Wignot
Breakthrough Director Award, Presented by Cadillac
The Breakthrough Director Award Presented by Cadillac jury included: Anna Boden, Chinonye Chukwu, Ricky D’Ambrose, Richard Gladstein & Anne Rosellini
Best Screenplay
The Best Screenplay jury included: Lee Daniels, Lena Dunham, Sian Heder, Scott Lambert & Diego Luna
Outstanding Lead Performance
The Outstanding Lead Performance jury included: Thomas Benski, Liz Cardenas, Ethan Hawke, David Lowery & Alfre Woodard
Outstanding Supporting Performance
The Outstanding Supporting Performance jury included: Juan Pablo Gonzalez, Alma Har’el, Stephan James, Anya Taylor-Joy & Julie Yorn
Breakthrough Series – Under 40 minutes
The Breakthrough Series (Under 40 Minutes) jury included: Adam Arkin, Sterlin Harjo, Jordana Mollick, Taylour Paige & Susanna Styron
Breakthrough Series – Over 40 minutes
The Breakthrough Series (Over 40 Minutes) jury included: DeMane Davis, Frankie Faison, Sanaa Hamri, Haley Lu Richardson & Paul Thureen
Outstanding Performance in a New Series
The Outstanding Performance in a New Series jury included: Danielle Brooks, Kim Coleman, Aaron Cooley & Soo Hugh
Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Gotham Film & Media Institute
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