Janicza Bravo’s ‘Zola’ leads 37th Spirit Awards nominations

Janicza Bravo’s tweet-inspired road comedy Zola lead the nominations for the 37th Film Independent Spirit Awards announced this morning with seven, including Best Feature, Director, Screenplay and Female Lead for Taylour Paige.

Next up were The Novice with five and The Lost Daughter and Wild Indian with four apiece.

Despite earning nominations in Feature, Director and Screenplay, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter and Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon both missed out on nominations for their lead actors (Oscar winners Olivia Colman and Joaquin Phoenix, respectively) while earning nods for their supporting players Jessie Buckley and Colman Domingo.

A24 was the most rewarded studio, receiving 13 nominations in total, for The Humans, C’mon, C’mon and Zola. NEON, distributor of Pig and A Chiara, and Netflix, which backed The Lost Daughter and Passing, were just behind with 9 nominations apiece.

Bleecker Street’s Mass was selected for the Robert Altman Award, which goes to a film’s director, casting director(s) and cast. This win prevented cast members from earning individual acting nominations.

Four of the five directing nominees this year were women: Maggie Gyllenhaal for The Lost Daughter, Lauren Hadaway for The Novice, Ninja Thyberg for Pleasure and Bravo for Zola. Of the nominated writers and directors, 44% are women and 38% are BIPOC. Of all nominated actors, 60% are BIPOC. And of all 2022 nominees, 46% are women and 32% are BIPOC.

The nomination were announced on Tuesday by by Naomi Watts, Regina Hall, and Beanie Feldstein. The awards, which are returning in-person in 2022 after going virtual due to COVID in 2021. In order to qualify, eligible films have to have budgets of less than $22.5 million.

The 37th Film Independent Spirit Awards will take place in Santa Monica on March 6, 2022 and air live on IFC.

Best Feature

• A Chiara
• C’mon C’mon
• The Lost Daughter
• The Novice
• Zola

Best First Feature

• 7 Days
• Hollers
• Queen Glory
• Test Pattern
• Wild Indian

Best Director

• Mike Mills – C’mon C’mon
• Maggie Gyllenhaal – The Lost Daughter
• Lauren Hadaway – The Novice
• Ninja Thyberg – Pleasure
• Janicza Bravo – Zola

Best Male Lead

• Clifton Collins, Jr. – Jockey
• Frankie Faison – The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain
• Michael Greyeyes – Wild Indian
• Udo Kier – Swan Song
• Simon Rex – Red Rocket

Best Supporting Male

• Colman Domingo – Zola
• Meeko Gattuso – Queen Glory
• Troy Kotsur – CODA
• Will Patton – Sweet Thing
• Chaske Spencer – Wild Indian

Best Female Lead

• Isabelle Fuhrman – The Novice
• Brittany S. Hall – Test Pattern
• Patti Harrison – Together Together
• Taylour Paige – Zola
• Kali Reis – Catch the Fair One

Best Supporting Female

• Jessie Buckley – The Lost Daughter
• Amy Forsyth – The Novice
• Ruth Negga – Passing
• Revika Anne Reustle – Pleature
• Suzanna Son – Red Rocket

Robert Altman Award: Mass (Director: Fran Kranz; Casting Directors: Henry Russell Bergstein and Allison Estrin; Cast: Kagen Albright, Reed Birney, Michelle N. Carter, Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimptonand Breeda Wool)

Best Screenplay

• C’mon C’mon
• The Lost Daughter
• Swan Song
• Together Together
• Zola

Best First Screenplay

• Cicada
• Mass
• Pig
• Test Pattern
• Wild Indian

John Cassavetes Award (Given to the best feature made for under $500,000)

• Cryptozoo
• Jockey
• Shiva Baby
• Sweet Thing
• This is Not a War Story

Best Editing

• A Chiara
• The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain
• The Novice
• The Nowhere Inn
• Zola

Best Cinematography

• A Chiara
• Blue Bayou
• The Humans
• Passing
• Zola

Best Documentary

• Ascension
• Flee
• In the Same Breath
• Procession
• Summer of Soul

Best International Film

• Compartment No. 6 (Finland)
• Drive My Car (Japan)
• Parallel Mothers (Spain)
• Petite Maman (France)
• Prayers for the Stolen (Mexico)

Producers Award (Honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity and vision required to produce quality independent films)

Brad Becker-Parton
Pin-Chun Liu
Lizzie Shapiro

Someone to Watch Award

Alex Camilleri, Luzzu
Michael Sarnoski, Pig
Gillian Wallace Horvat, I Blame Society

TELEVISION CATEGORIES

Best New Non-Scripted or Documentary Series

• Black and Missing
• The Choe Show
• The Lady and The Dale
• Nuclear Family
• Philly D.A.

Best New Scripted Series

• Blindspotting
• It’s a Sin
• Reservation Dogs
• The Underground Railroad
• We Are Lady Parts

Best Female Performance in a New Scripted Series

• Thuso Mbedu, The Underground Railroad
• Anjana Vasan, We Are Lady Parts
• Jana Schmieding, Rutherford Falls
• Jasmine Cephus Jones, Blindspotting
• Deborah Ayorinde, THEM: Covenant

Best Male Performance in a New Scripted Series

• Lee Jung-jae, Squid Game
• Olly Alexander, It’s a Sin
• Michael Greyeyes, Rutherford Falls
• Murray Bartlett, The White Lotus
• Ashley Thomas, THEM: Covenant

Best Ensemble Cast in a New Scripted Series
Reservation Dogs

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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