‘Call Me By Your Name’ and ‘Get Out’ are in the lead at this year’s Gotham Awards.
Awards season has officially kicked off with the 27th annual IFP Gotham Awards. Honoring the best of indie screen achievements in the past year, both Call Me By Your Name and Get Out won big in different categories. We may still be in the early days of the season, but these films have established themselves as frontrunners in next year’s Oscars race.
Jordan Peele‘s infectiously biting and relevant Get Out won the award for Best Screenplay, the Audience Award, and the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award, overall taking home the most accolades for the night. However, Luca Guadagnino‘s ultimate summer romance Call Me By Your Name nabbed the top award for Best Feature as well as a Breakthrough Actor trophy for its star, Timothée Chalamet.
The other major acting awards went to James Franco for The Disaster Artist and Saoirse Ronan for Lady Bird. Mudbound received the Gotham Jury Award for its ensemble cast. Finally, Yance Ford’s Strong Island was awarded Best Documentary.
The Gotham Awards have been a suitable indicator of true Oscar contenders in past years. Of course, the formula doesn’t always work depending on the presence of studio projects at ceremonies like the Oscars, which consider a wider cross-section of movies in their nominations. But certain powerful indies reveal themselves at institutions like the Gotham Awards nonetheless. For example, last year, Moonlight was awarded Best Feature, Best Screenplay, the Audience Award, and the Special Jury Award. It then went on to win Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali at the Academy Awards. In the years prior, Spotlight and Birdman similarly won Best Feature and proceeded to attain top honor at the Oscars.
Oscar chatter has intensified in the last few weeks as awards season drew nearer, and both Call Me By Your Name and Get Out have been tossed around as very powerful contenders in this year’s Best Picture race. The Gotham Best Feature win has clearly proven rather accurately prophetic in determining Best Picture, greatly increasing Call Me By Your Name‘s chances as the expected winner of the highly coveted Oscar. Praise for Call Me By Your Name is absolutely well-deserved, and as it rolls out in cinemas worldwide, the reception has continued to be overwhelmingly positive.
Get Out‘s multiple wins allows for some fun speculation as well. Get Out is groundbreaking is many ways that subvert the tropes of a typical Oscar winner away, and it would be a great follow-up to Moonlight‘s “surprise” win from the year before. My hope is that it will also continue to pick up other awards as the season progresses, regardless of Oscar chances. Plus, if a Best Picture and Best Director split happens again in some way, I wouldn’t be totally mad about that either.
Gotham actor awards could also point to potential Oscar winners, even if it’s less of a surety. Casey Affleck basically swept up awards last year with Manchester By the Sea (much to our chagrin), although Isabelle Huppert did not win in her category despite taking home the Gotham for Best Actress for Elle. Neither Paul Dano (Love & Mercy) nor Bel Powley (The Diary of a Teenage Girl) made it to Oscar glory despite winning at the Gothams; those awards instead went to Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant) and Brie Larson (Room). The year Michael Keaton and Julianne Moore took home Gotham acting awards proved to be inconsistent too; Keaton did not win Best Actor for Birdman at the Oscars but Moore was awarded Best Actress for Still Alice.
Either way, the Gotham Awards assures us that this year’s awards season will be full of great contenders in a race that includes some genuinely brilliant blossoming talents. With films as powerful as Call Me By Your Name and Get Out both in the running, this season is getting no complaints from me.
Read on for the full list of winners at the 27th annual Gotham Awards:
Best Feature
Call Me by Your Name
Luca Guadagnino, director; Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges, Rodrigo Teixeira, Marco Morabito, James Ivory, Howard Rosenman, producers (Sony Pictures Classics)
The Florida Project
Sean Baker, director; Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch, Kevin Chinoy, Andrew Duncan, Alex Saks, Francesca Silvestri, Shih-Ching Tsou, producers (A24)
Get Out
Jordan Peele, director; Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Edward H. Hamm, Jr., Jordan Peele, producers (Universal Pictures)
Good Time
Josh and Benny Safdie, directors; Paris Kasidokostas-Latsis, Terry Dougas, Sebastian Bear-McClard, Oscar Boyson, producers (A24)
I, Tonya
Craig Gillespie, director; Bryan Unkeless, Steven Rogers, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, producers (NEON)
Best Documentary
Ex Libris – The New York Public Library
Frederick Wiseman, director and producer (Zipporah Films)
Rat Film
Theo Anthony, director; Riel Roch-Decter, Sebastian Pardo, producers (MEMORY and Cinema Guild)
Strong Island
Yance Ford, director; Yance Ford, Joslyn Barnes, producers (Netflix)
Whose Streets?
Sabaah Folayan, Damon Davis, directors; Sabaah Folayan, Damon Davis, Jennifer MacArthur, Flannery Miller, producers (Magnolia Pictures)
The Work
Jairus McLeary, director; Gethin Aldous, co-director; Alice Henty, Eon McLeary, Jairus McLeary, Miles McLeary, producers (The Orchard and First Look Media)
Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award
Maggie Betts for Novitiate (Sony Pictures Classics)
Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird (A24)
Kogonada for Columbus (Superlative Films/Depth of Field)
Jordan Peele for Get Out (Universal Pictures)
Joshua Z Weinstein for Menashe (A24)
Best Screenplay
The Big Sick, Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani (Amazon Studios)
Brad’s Status, Mike White (Amazon Studios)
Call Me by Your Name, James Ivory (Sony Pictures Classics)
Columbus, Kogonada (Superlative Films/Depth of Field)
Get Out, Jordan Peele (Universal Pictures)
Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig (A24)
Best Actor
Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project (A24)
James Franco in The Disaster Artist (A24)
Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out (Universal Pictures)
Robert Pattinson in Good Time (A24)
Adam Sandler in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Netflix)
Harry Dean Stanton in Lucky (Magnolia Pictures)
Best Actress
Melanie Lynskey in I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (Netflix)
Haley Lu Richardson in Columbus (Superlative Films/Depth of Field)
Margot Robbie in I, Tonya (NEON)
Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird (A24)
Lois Smith in Marjorie Prime (FilmRise)
Breakthrough Actor
Mary J. Blige in Mudbound (Netflix)
Timothée Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name (Sony Pictures Classics)
Harris Dickinson in Beach Rats (NEON)
Kelvin Harrison, Jr. in It Comes at Night (A24)
Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project (A24)
Gotham Jury Award
Mudbound; Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan, and Jonathan Banks.
Breakthrough Series – Long Form
Atlanta, Donald Glover, creator; Donald Glover, Dianne McGunigle, Paul Simms, executive producers (FX Networks)
Better Things, Pamela Adlon, Louis C.K., creators; Dave Becky, M. Blair Breard, Louis C.K., Pamela Adlon, executive producers (FX Networks)
Dear White People, Justin Simien, creator; Yvette Lee Bowser, Justin Simien, Stephanie Allain, Julia Lebedev, executive producers (Netflix)
Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, creator; Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Harry Williams, Jack Williams, executive producers (Amazon)
Search Party, Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, Michael Showalter, creators; Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, Michael Showalter, Tony Hernandez, Lilly Burns, executive producers (TBS)
Breakthrough Series – Short Form
555, Kate Berlant, Andrew DeYoung and John Early, creators (Vimeo)
Inconceivable, Joel Ashton McCarthy, creator (YouTube)
Junior, Zoe Cassavetes, creator (Blackpills and VICE)
Let Me Die a Nun, Sarah Salovaara, creator (Vimeo)
The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes, Nancy Andrews, creator (YouTube)
Related Topics: Awards
