Columbia Celebrates Independent Spirit Award Nominations
Numerous Columbia alums and faculty have been honored with nominations for the 40th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards in Los Angeles. The awards are widely considered the premier event for independent filmmaking, and celebrate the year’s best work in film and television.
To be eligible in the film category, productions must have a budget under $30 million, while the television category is open only to productions in their first season. At the Awards’ inaugural ceremony in 1985, Martin Scorsese and Joel Coen split the Best Director prize. In 2021, the awards expanded to include television, and in 2022, they made the change to gender neutral acting categories.
Top contenders at this year’s awards include Neon’s Anora and A24’s I Saw the TV Glow, with a leading six nominations apiece. I Saw the TV Glow, which includes the work of Film alum Tyler St. Pierre ’21 on quality control, is nominated for Best Feature, Director, Screenplay, Lead Performance, Supporting Performance, and the Producers Award. Already a cult favorite, the film tells the story of two outcast teens who bond over a supernatural TV show, and find themselves increasingly pulled into its world.
Also up for Best Feature is Amazon MGM Studios’ Nickel Boys, produced by Dede Gardner (CC ’06). The film, which is also nominated for Best Cinematography, follows the friendship and trials of two Black teens in a Florida reform school.
Celebrating three nominations is Briarcliff Entertainment’s The Apprentice, executive produced by Christina Wood ’19. The biopic follows a young Donald Trump building his real estate business with the aid of controversial lawyer Roy Cohn, and earned nominations for Best Director, Best Actor for Sebastian Stan in the titular role, and Best Editing.
Another film starring Sebastian Stan, A Different Man, also landed a pair of nominations, for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Performance for Adam Pearson. Produced by Gabriel Mayers (CC ’17), the psychological thriller follows an aspiring actor who undergoes an extreme procedure to alter his appearance, and is horrified by the results.
Film alum Gregory Kershaw '11 saw his Gaucho Gaucho nominated for Best Documentary. Alongside frequent collaborator Michael Dweck, Kershaw served as Director, Producer, and Cinematographer for the film about a community of Argentine cowboys and cowgirls, or “Gauchos.”
Sony Pictures Classics’ Between the Temples was nominated for Best Supporting Performance for Carol Kane. The film, about the unlikely reconnection of a cantor and his grade school teacher-turned adult Bat Mitzvah student, was written and co-produced by C. Mason Wells (CC ’06) and edited by John Magary ’07 (who also appears in the film as “Muscular Blond Guy”).
Searchlight Pictures’ A Real Pain, executive produced by Jennifer Westin ’06, snagged nominations for Best Screenplay for Jesse Eisenberg and Best Supporting Performance for Kieran Culkin. The film follows two cousins on a serio-comic trip to Poland in the wake of their grandmother’s passing.
In TV, FX’s Shōgun leads the pack with five nominations. The hit series had its first two episodes directed and co-executive produced by Jonathan van Tulleken '10. The show is nominated for Best New Scripted Series, along with two nominations for Best Lead Performance and two for Best Supporting Performance in a New Scripted Series. Based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell, the story begins in a feudal Japan on the brink of civil war, with a mysterious European ship marooned on its shores. The series was also a juggernaut at this year’s Emmy Awards, raking up the most wins ever for a single season.
And last but far from least, Hulu’s Under the Bridge received nominations for Best Lead Performance and Best Supporting Performance in a New Scripted Series for Lily Gladstone and Chloe Guidry respectively. The series, which recounts the true story of a missing 14-year-old in British Columbia and the teenage girls accused of her murder, is based on the book by late novelist and Writing Professor Rebecca Godfrey, who passed in 2022. As Associate Professor Leslie Jamison wrote in a remembrance for the School of the Arts, “it brought her a sense of pride and joy to know that the story she’d told with such rigorous compassion would reach a broader audience.”
Winners will be announced at a ceremony in Santa Monica on Saturday, February 22, 2025, one week before the Academy Awards bring the season to a close. The event will also be live streamed here.