2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards: Nominee Highlights
Yesterday morning, Film Independent announced their nominees for the 2022 Independent Spirit Awards. Traditionally held right before the Oscars, next year’s ceremony will take place on March 6, 2022 and will broadcast exclusively on IFC.
Here are some notable titles from WFF alumni and friends that were included in the list:
CATCH THE FAIR ONE
Nominated for: Best Female Lead
Josef Kubota Wladyka’s thriller CATCH THE FAIR ONE centers on a Native American ex-boxer who decides to infiltrate a sinister human trafficking operation to search for her missing younger sister. The film was produced by WFF alumni Mollye Asher and screened at the 22nd Annual Woodstock Film Festival this past fall.
PASSING
Nominated for: Best Supporting Female, Best Cinematography
Directed by Rebecca Hall, PASSING follows two former childhood friends who reconnect as adults in 1920s New York, only for one to realize the other is married to a racist man and is trying to “pass” for white. The film was edited by longtime WFF Advisory Board member Sabine Hoffman.
MASS
Nominated for: Best First Screenplay, Robert Altman Award
Winner of the jury award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2021 Woodstock Film Festival, Fran Kranz’s directorial debut MASS is a searing character study of four parents trying to reconcile in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy.
FLEE
Nominated for: Best Documentary
Jonas Poher Rassmussen’s FLEE is an animated documentary that tells the true story of Amin, an openly gay academic living in Denmark who decides to confront his hidden past as a child refugee from Afghanistan. FLEE was the 22nd Annual Woodstock Film Festival’s Spotlight Film and is quickly becoming a standout this awards season.
PETITE MAMAN
Nominated for: Best International Film
Directed by French Auteur and WFF alumni Céline Sciamma, PETITE MAMAN is a whimsical childhood tale about a young girl who befriends the past version of her mother in the woods around her recently deceased grandmother’s home. PETITE MAMAN screened at the 2021 Woodstock Film Festival.
PROCESSION
Nominated for: Best Documentary
PROCESSION documents six midwestern men who process their trauma as survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy through acting out fictional scenes depicting rituals of power within the church. The film was directed by Robert Greene and screened at the 2021 Woodstock Film Festival.
SHIVA BABY
Nominated for: John Cassavetes Award
Directed by WFF alumni Emma Seligman, SHIVA BABY is a tense black comedy about a young woman on the cusp of graduating college who must confront prying relatives and her overachieving ex girlfriend at a funeral party. SHIVA BABY originally screened as a short film at the 2018 Woodstock Film Festival before being expanded into a feature-length project. In June, WFF hosted an outdoor screening of the expanded film at the Bearsville Theater complex in Woodstock, New York.
NUCLEAR FAMILY
Nominated for: Best New Non-Scripted or Documentary Series
In NUCLEAR FAMILY, filmmaker Ry Russo-Young mines from her own life experience as one of the very few children with openly LGBTQ parents in the early 1980s to excavate a shocking custody battle that almost tore her family apart. The limited HBO series was produced by WFF Board Member Peter Saraf and screened at the 2021 Woodstock Film Festival.
DRIVE MY CAR
Nominated for: Best International Film
Adapted from the titular short story by Haruki Murakami, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s DRIVE MY CAR is a slow burning drama centered on a grieving actor who forms a special bond with the young woman assigned to be his chauffeur for a theater festival. This month the Woodstock Film Festival held a screening of DRIVE MY CAR for our patrons and Academy voters at the Rosendale Theatre in Rosendale, New York.
SUMMER OF SOUL
Nominated for: Best Documentary
The first film by Grammy Award-winning musician Questlove, SUMMER OF SOUL is a fascinating deep dive into the overlooked Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, a six-week celebration of Black music and culture that included performances by titans like Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone. In July, Woodstock Film Festival hosted a special community screening of SUMMER OF SOUL at Greenville Drive-in Outdoor Cinema in Greenville, New York.
You can see the full list of nominees for the Film Independent Spirit Awards here. Good luck to everyone who was mentioned!