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Gotham Awards Nominations Were Announced Today

by · November 12, 2020

The Gotham Awards ceremony will be held on January 11, 2021, on their usual stage at Cipriani Wall Street, but with no guests.

 

Typically the starting point of the Oscar season, they are a celebration of independent cinema. They are given by the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), and the ceremony usually happens around this time of the year. However, the entire awards season has been pushed back by around two months this year, so instead, the nominations were announced today.

 

Even though the independent awards might give us some insight into what the Oscar season will look like, we shouldn’t give them as much relevance as other lists like the PGA nominations, the Actors Guild, or the DGA. The reason being that many contenders for the big awards do not qualify for either the Gotham Awards or the Spirit Awards – movies like Mank, or Da 5 Bloods were not eligible.

 

However, they do tell us some things about how things are shaping up in those circles. For example, Pieces of a Woman was expected to land at least a nomination in the Best Actress category for Vanessa Kirby, who already won that prize in Venice. Another surprise, but this time on a positive note, was Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, which landed 4 nominations, including Best Feature, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor.

 

As of today, the only movie included in the Best Feature category that is expected to land a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars is Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland. Also, all five Best Feature contenders were directed by a woman, which comes as a very nice surprise. Another interesting addition to the list is the French film Cuties, which was the subject of a massive controversy on social media due to Netflix’s marketing campaign in the U.S.

 

In terms of acting awards, the stars are lining up for Chadwick Boseman to get at least a posthumous Oscar nomination, and maybe even a win, for George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Hopefully, the Academy will look at this list and take into consideration the outstanding performance by Jesse Buckley in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which is being rather underappreciated this Oscar season. I’m also kind of disappointed the script for this movie wasn’t nominated, but, to be fair, I haven’t seen most of the movies on that list, so who am I to judge?

 

The nominees for the 30th edition of the Gotham Independent Awards are:

 

BEST FEATURE

The Assistant

First Cow

Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Nomadland

Relic

 

BEST DOCUMENTARY

76 Days

City Hall

Our Time Machine

A Thousand Cuts

Time

 

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

Bacurau

Beanpole

Cuties (Mignonnes)

Identifying Features

Martin Eden

Wolfwalkers

 

BINGHAM RAY BREAKTHROUGH DIRECTOR AWARD

Radha Blank, The Forty-Year-Old Version

Channing Godfrey Peoples, Miss Juneteenth

Alex Thompson, Saint Frances

Carlo Mirabella-Davis, Swallow

Andrew Patterson, The Vast of Night

 

BEST SCREENPLAY

Bad Education, Mike Makowsky

First Cow, Jon Raymond, Kelly Reichardt

The Forty-Year-Old Version, Radha Blank

Fourteen, Dan Sallitt

The Vast of Night, James Montague, Craig Sanger

 

BEST ACTOR

Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal

Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Jude Law, The Nest

John Magaro, First Cow

Jesse Plemons, I’m Thinking of Ending Things

 

BEST ACTRESS

Nicole Beharie, Miss Juneteenth

Jessie Buckley, I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari

Carrie Coon, The Nest

Frances McDormand, Nomadland

 

BREAKTHROUGH ACTOR

Jasmine Batchelor, The Surrogate

Kingsley Ben-Adir, One Night in Miami

Sidney Flanigan, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Orion Lee, First Cow

Kelly O’Sullivan, Saint Frances

 

BREAKTHROUGH SERIES – LONG FORMAT (40-PLUS MINUTES PER EPISODE)

The Great

Immigration Nation

P-Valley

Unorthodox

Watchmen

 

BREAKTHROUGH SERIES – SHORT FORMAT (LESS THAN 40 MINUTES PER EPISODE)

Betty

Dave

I May Destroy You

Taste the Nation

Work in Progress

 

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