Film Independent Spirit Awards 2019: Complete List Of Winners
Before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could dish out Oscars this year, the Film Independent had to dole out its own awards. The 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards took place on Saturday, February 23, just a day before the 91st Annual Academy Awards, and we have the complete list of winners.
Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk won big, taking home the trophy for Best Feature and beating out stiff competition in Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade, Paul Schrader's First Reformed, Debra Granik's Leave No Trace, and Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here. Jenkins also scored the Best Director Spirit Award, trumping Granik (for Leave No Trace), Ramsay (for You Were Never Really Here), Schrader (for First Reformed), and Tamara Jenkins (for Private Life) in the process.
Based on James Baldwin's acclaimed novel of the same name, If Beale Street Could Talk nabbed a third accolade at the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards — this time the Best Supporting Female Actor award that went to Regina King for her performance as Sharon Rivers, the mother of Teyonah Parris' as Ernestine Rivers and KiKi Layne's Clementine "Tish" Rivers, and the wife of Colman Domingo's Joseph Rivers.
Ethan Hawke took home the award for Best Male Lead for his turn as Reverend Ernst Toller in First Reformed, while Glenn Close won the Best Female Lead for her performance as Joan Castleman in The Wife.
Hawke went up against John Cho (David Kim in the twisty thriller Searching), Daveed Diggs (ex-felon Collin Hoskins in Carlos López Estrada's underrated comedy-drama Blindspotting), Christian Malheiros (15-year-old Sócrates in Alexandre Moratto's Sócrates), and Joaquin Phoenix (post-traumatic stress disorder-riddled hired gun Joe in You Were Never Really Here). Close bested contenders Toni Collette (who played miniature artist Annie Graham in Hereditary), Elsie Fisher (who portrayed young teen Kayla Day in Eighth Grade), Regina Hall (who charmed as Double Whammies sports bar manager Lisa Conroy), Helena Howard (who played the title character Madeline in Madeline's Madeline), and Carey Mulligan (who starred opposite Jake Gyllenhaal as Jeanette Brinson in the Paul Dano-directed drama Wildlife).
In the supporting actor categories, King of course won for Best Supporting Female Actor and British actor Richard E. Grant scored the award for Best Supporting Male Actor thanks to his dazzling performance as Jack Hock, the eccentric, drug-dealing friend of Melissa McCarthy's author Lee Israel, in Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Though Burnham didn't walk away with the Best Director award at the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards, he did win the trophy for Best First Screenplay, for writing Eighth Grade. He was up against some heavy-hitters: Christina Choe for Nancy, Cory Finley for Thoroughbreds, Jennifer Fox for The Tale, and Laurie Shephard and Quinn Shephard for Blame. When accepting the award, Burnham thanked the film community for being so welcoming to him, admitted that he was intimidated when he got started writing and directing Eighth Grade, and gave a special nod to the people who have supported him most and those who inspired his coming-of-age directorial and feature screenwriting debut.
"I was told very often that I was a comedian for 13-year-old girls, and f*** yeah I am! I'm proud of that," Burnham said. "They deserve to be paid attention to."
Best Screenplay went to Can You Ever Forgive Me? scribes Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, who beat Colette's Richard Glatzer, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, and Wash Westmoreland; Private Life's Tamara Jenkins; Sorry to Bother You's Boots Riley; and First Reformed's Paul Schrader.
Speaking of Boots Riley, the filmmaker took home the Spirit Award for Best First Feature for Sorry to Bother You, his absurdist dark comedy that stars Lakeith Stanfield as Cassius "Cash" Green and Tessa Thompson as Detroit.
Netflix's Roma won for Best International Film, Suspiria's Sayombhu Mukdeeprom won for Best Cinematography, and the Fred Rogers film Won't You Be My Neighbor? won for Best Documentary. Accepting the award, Won't You Be My Neighbor? director Morgan Neville said, "Fred knew that kindness was more than something that sounds good on bumper sticker. Radical kindness, which means civility, is something like oxygen."
Many of the 2019 Spirit Awards nominees were underappreciated by mainstream moviegoers in 2018 and by other film organizations that already handed out awards earlier this season. It's fantastic to see the Film Independent honor such incredible pieces of cinema, even more so since the Spirit Awards mark the last awards ceremony before the Oscars. In years past, the Spirit Awards have served as the final predictor of which movies might win Academy Awards — but this year is different, as none of the nominees for Best Feature at the Spirit Awards are up for Best Picture at the Oscars. For the past four years, the films that took home the Best Feature Spirit Award went on to win the Best Picture Oscar: 12 Years a Slave in 2014, Birdman in 2015, Spotlight in 2016, and Moonlight in 2017. (The Shape of Water took home Best Picture at the 2018 Academy Awards, but it was not up for Best Feature at the 2018 Spirit Awards.)
This awards season has been pretty unpredictable, and the trend continued with the 2019 Spirit Awards. With the 2019 Oscars set to air in just a few hours from the time of this writing, it's truly anyone's guess which films will score the shiny golden statues.
Chosen by the Film Independent's 6,000-plus members and selected by its 46-person committee, the Spirit Awards are handed to films that were produced in the States (even foreign films) and cost less than $20 million to make. Find the full list of winners below.
Best Feature
Eighth Grade
First Reformed
WINNER: If Beale Street Could Talk
Leave No Trace
You Were Never Really Here
Best First Feature
Hereditary
WINNER: Sorry to Bother You
The Tale
We the Animals
Wildlife
Best Director
Debra Granik, Leave No Trace
WINNER: Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk
Tamara Jenkins, Private Life
Lynne Ramsay, You Were Never Really Here
Paul Schrader, First Reformed
Best Female Lead
WINNER: Glenn Close, The Wife
Toni Collette, Hereditary
Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade
Regina Hall, Support the Girls
Helena Howard, Madeline's Madeline
Carey Mulligan, Wildlife
Best Male Lead
John Cho, Searching
Daveed Diggs, Blindspotting
WINNER: Ethan Hawke, First Reformed
Christian Malheiros, Sócrates
Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here
Best Supporting Female Actor
Kayli Carter, Private Life
Tyne Daly, A Bread Factory
WINNER: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Leave No Trace
J. Smith-Cameron, Nancy
Best Supporting Male Actor
Raúl Castillo, We the Animals
Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman
WINNER: Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Josh Hamilton, Eighth Grade
John David Washington, Monsters and Men
Best Screenplay
Richard Glatzer, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, and Wash Westmoreland, Colette
WINNER: Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Tamara Jenkins, Private Life
Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You
Paul Schrader, First Reformed
Best First Screenplay
WINNER: Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade
Christina Choe, Nancy
Cory Finley, Thoroughbreds
Jennifer Fox, The Tale
Laurie Shephard and Quinn Shephard, Blame
John Cassavetes Award
A Bread Factory
WINNER: En el Séptimo Día
Never Goin' Back
Sócrates
Thunder Road
Best Documentary
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Minding the Gap
Of Fathers and Sons
On Her Shoulders
Shirkers
WINNER: Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Best International Film
Burning (South Korea)
The Favourite (United Kingdom)
Happy as Lazzaro (Italy)
WINNER: Roma (Mexico)
Shoplifters (Japan)
Best Editing
WINNER: Joe Bini, You Were Never Really Here
Keiko Deguchi, Brian A. Kates, and Jeremiah Zagar, We the Animals
Luke Dunkley, Nick Fenton, Chris Gill, and Julian Hart, American Animals
Anne Fabini, Alex Hall, and Gary Levy, The Tale
Nick Houy, Mid90s
Best Cinematography
Ashley Connor, Madeline's Madeline
Diego García, Wildlife
Benjamin Loeb, Mandy
WINNER: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Suspiria
Zak Mulligan, We the Animals
Robert Altman Award (Best Ensemble)
WINNER: Suspiria
The Bonnie Award
WINNER: Debra Granik
Tamara Jenkins
Karyn Kusama
Producers Award
Jonathan Duffy and Kelly Williams
Gabrielle Nadig
WINNER: Shrihari Sathe
Someone to Watch Award
WINNER: Alex Moratto, Sócrates
Ioana Uricaru, Lemonade
Jeremiah Zagar, We the Animals
Truer Than Fiction Award
Alexandria Bomback, On Her Shoulders
WINNER: Bing Liu, Minding the Gap
Ramell Ross, Hale County This Morning, This Evening