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A Different Man won best feature at the 2024 Gotham Awards, while Nickel Boys and Sing Sing each won two awards at the star-studded ceremony at New York’s Cipriani Wall Street on Monday night.
A Different Man director Aaron Schimberg, accepting the top prize, said he was “totally stunned” by the win and admitted he hadn’t prepared a speech.
“I thought it would be, considering the other nominees, hubris to even consider preparing a speech. So I’m going to wing this,” Schimberg said before thanking the Gothams and the team behind the film, including stars Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson. “I’m sorry I really didn’t prepare a better speech. I really didn’t see this as a possibility.”
Going into the ceremony, Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning Anora led with four nominations, including for best feature, but the film went home empty-handed.
In best feature, Anora and A Different Man faced off against Babygirl, Challengers and Nickel Boys. Nickel Boys was up for three awards in total, with the additional nominations coming in the categories of best director (RaMell Ross) and breakthrough performer (Brandon Wilson).
Ross won best director and Wilson won breakthrough performer, with Nickel Boys co-star and presenter Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor audibly shocked as she announced that Wilson had won. Taking the stage, Wilson admitted he didn’t expect to be up there but noted he removed his shoes because Ellis-Taylor also wasn’t wearing shoes.
Sing Sing won in both the lead and supporting performance categories, with Colman Domingo winning the lead award and Clarence Maclin winning best supporting performance.
Babygirl, which like Different Man, went into the night up for two awards, also went home empty-handed as did three-time nominee I Saw the TV Glow and double nominees Hard Truths and The Fire Inside.
Since 2021, the Gotham Awards has recognized performers in gender-neutral categories.
This year, though, marked the first time in several years in which TV categories were not presented during the fall awards show, as The Gotham recently broke those out into a separate TV awards ceremony, which takes place in June.
In addition to the competitive awards, the Gothams also honored the following people and films with tributes: The Piano Lesson received the Ensemble Tribute; Franklin Leonard and the Black List received the Anniversary Tribute; Angelina Jolie received the Performer Tribute for Maria; Zendaya received the Spotlight Tribute for Challengers; Sing Sing received the Social Justice Tribute; Denis Villeneuve received he Director Tribute for Dune: Part Two; Timothée Chalamet and James Mangold were honored with the Visionary Tribute for A Complete Unknown.
Maria director Pablo Larraín was on hand to present Jolie with her award, and the star noted that the day would have been Maria Callas’ 101st birthday. Jolie also paid tribute to her mother for introducing her to the arts, emphasizing the importance of those early experiences: “Art is a way we come together to know each other, to laugh with each other and to understand each other,” she said. “It’s why it’s so important that art is taught in our schools and so concerning that many of those programs are being reduced.”
Domingo presented Sing Sing with its honor, Radhika Jones presented to Franklin Leonard, and Josh O’Connor presented to his Challengers co-star Zendaya. Zendaya later returned to the stage to honor Villeneuve, who was also lauded by Jake Gyllenhaal. Zoë Kravitz presented The Piano Lesson with its honor, and Oscar Isaac presented Chalamet and Mangold with their honor for A Complete Unknown.
Speaking about Sing Sing, Domingo said it was “made with the independent spirit that guided every step in the making of it, from script development, to prep to production to post to this stage. We have collaborated collectively in a way where we cannot tell where one person’s work ends and another person’s begins. Our principle throughout was to make sure that every single person felt seen, respected and their work was honored.”
He then highlighted, to cheers from the audience, the film’s approach to paying everyone who works on the film, from crew members to the director to the star, the same wage and making sure they all received equity.
Of this tactic, Domingo said, “we hope [this approach] will be a light in the darkness of our industry and help find new paths to help create independent film and ensure that everyone feels seen and equitable for everyone. Everyone on Sing Sing has ownership of Sing Sing. When the film succeeds we all succeed. We truly made it together.”
He continued, “I don’t have to tell you that the soul of the world is aching. We wanted to offer a story of human beings finding light in the darkness, men finding tenderness in the keys to enlivening their humanity as they play theater games or perform Shakespeare and found pieces of their soul trapped under the rubble of their circumstances.”
Accepting the Gotham Awards honor, Sing Sing actor Sean “Dino” Johnson, said, “We’re living proof that no matter where you start you should always be able to dream of where you could go and be.”
While O’Connor praised Zendaya’s “shape-shifting versatility and dubious skills with a racket,” he admitted he was “unable to provide strategic insight into how Zendaya transformed into the movie star we witness today.”
Still he said of his co-star, “She’s truly alive to whoever she’s playing opposite. She listens and responds in the moment. She offers the unexpected and challenges you to meet her intensity.”
Taking the stage, Zendaya insisted that O’Connor had given her too much praise.
“I’m going to get you back. We hate giving each other compliments,” she said. She explained that like her Challengers character Tashi, she loves what she does for a living, a passion that she said was not possible without the people she gets to work with.
“Without all of them none of this is possible,” she said before later adding, “Thank you to everyone who makes moviemaking possible.”
Zendaya also thanked Challengers‘ studio MGM “for making sure this movie was seen in theaters. It’s so important we keep the moviegoing experience alive.”
Returning to honor Villeneuve, Zendaya quipped “I’m back,” before praising her Dune director as a “generous visionary.”
“A Denis Villeneuve film is always a captivating tale grounded in very very human stories,” she said. “Denis makes each one of us feel like we are his singular focus.”
After a highlight reel of Villeneuve’s work, Gyllenhaal took the stage to honor his “brilliant friend,” with whom he’s been close since they worked together on the 2014 film Enemy. He praised Villeneuve for bringing the same approach to the “bigger canvases” of the Dune movies.
And celebrating Villeneuve’s contradictory nature, Gyllenhaal called him an “artist with a fundamentally optimistic outlook who’s not afraid of the dark. In short, he’s a unicorn. A beautiful, gifted, Canadian unicorn.”
Accepting his honor, Villeneuve recalled meeting with Martin Scorsese as he was about to make his first Hollywood films, explaining that Scorsese’s advice was to “stay intact.”
“He meant to protect that flame as I was going into a system that can sometimes be harsh on artists,” Villeneuve said. He then thanked specific “guardian angels” who helped keep the light from going out, citing his agent Maha Dakhil, Legendary’s Mary Parent and his wife Tanya Lapointe.
Presenting Chalamet and Mangold with their honor, Isaac recalled being on the set of Dune and hearing that Chalamet was embarking on a film about Dylan and thinking that it “sounds like a really bad idea.” But then he, Josh Brolin and Stephen McKinley Henderson heard him play “Girl from the North Country,” saying that the “kid who had just started learning the guitar” approached Dylan’s songs “as if he was remembering something he’d always known.”
Chalamet later revealed that Isaac’s praise caused him to get emotional, as he explained that he had “tried to shape [himself] after” Isaac.
The Gotham Awards nominees were selected by committees of critics, journalists, festival programmers and film curators.
Separate juries of writers, directors, actors, producers, editors and others directly involved in making films determined the final award recipients.
Recent Gotham Awards winners have included Oscar winners Everything Everywhere All at Once, CODA, Nomadland, Marriage Story, American Factory, Moonlight, Spotlight and Birdman.
A complete list of this year’s Gotham Awards winners follows.
Best Feature
Anora
Sean Baker, director; Sean Baker, Alex Coco, Samantha Quan, producers (NEON)
Babygirl
Halina Reijn, director; David Hinojosa, Julia Oh, Halina Reijn, producers (A24)
Challengers
Luca Guadagnino, director; Luca Guadagnino, Rachel O’Connor, Amy Pascal, Zendaya, producers (Amazon MGM Studios)
A Different Man
Aaron Schimberg, director; Gabriel Mayers, Vanessa McDonnell, Christine Vachon, producers (A24) (WINNER)
Nickel Boys
RaMell Ross, director; Joslyn Barnes, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, David Levine, producers (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)
Best International Feature
All We Imagine as Light
Payal Kapadia, director; Julien Graff, Thomas Hakim, producers (Sideshow and Janus Films) (WINNER)
Green Border
Agnieszka Holland, director; Fred Bernstein, Agnieszka Holland, Marcin Wierzchoslawski, producers (Kino Lorber)
Hard Truths
Mike Leigh, director; Georgina Lowe, producer (Bleecker Street)
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
Thien An Pham, director; Jeremy Chua, Tran Van Thi, producers (Kino Lorber)
Vermiglio
Maura Delpero, director; Francesca Andreoli, Maura Delpero, Santiago Fondevila Sance, Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli, producers (Sideshow and Janus Films)
Best Documentary Feature
Dahomey
Mati Diop, director; Mati Diop, Judith Lou Lévy, Eve Robin, producers (MUBI)
Intercepted
Oksana Karpovych, director; Darya Bassel, Olha Beskhmelnytsina, Rocío B. Fuentes, Giacomo Nudi, Lucie Rego Pauline Tran Van Lieu, producers (Grasshopper Film)
No Other Land
Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor, directors; Fabien Greenberg, Bård Kjøge Rønning, producers (Antipode Films) (WINNER)
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Johan Grimonprez, director; Rémi Grellety, Daan Milius, producers (Kino Lorber)
Sugarcane
Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie, directors; Emily Kassie, Kellen Quinn, producers (National Geographic Documentary Films)
Union
Stephen Maing, Brett Story, directors; Samantha Curley, Mars Verrone, producers (Self-Distributed)
Best Director
Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine as Light (Sideshow and Janus Films)
Sean Baker, Anora (NEON)
Guan Hu, Black Dog (The Forge)
Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow (A24)
RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios) (WINNER)
Best Screenplay
Between the Temples, Nathan Silver, C. Mason Wells (Sony Pictures Classics)
Evil Does Not Exist, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Sideshow and Janus Films)
Femme, Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping (Utopia)
His Three Daughters, Azazel Jacobs (Netflix) (WINNER)
Janet Planet, Annie Baker (A24)
Breakthrough Director
Shuchi Talati, Girls Will Be Girls (Juno Films, Inc)
India Donaldson, Good One (Metrograph Pictures)
Alessandra Lacorazza, In the Summers (Music Box Films)
Vera Drew, The People’s Joker (Altered Innocence) (WINNER)
Mahdi Fleifel, To a Land Unknown (Watermelon Pictures)
Outstanding Lead Performance
Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl (Roadside Attractions)
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist (A24)
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing (A24) (WINNER)
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths (Bleecker Street)
Nicole Kidman, Babygirl (A24)
Keith Kupferer, Ghostlight (IFC Films)
Mikey Madison, Anora (NEON)
Demi Moore, The Substance (MUBI)
Saoirse Ronan, Outrun (Sony Pictures Classics)
Justice Smith, I Saw the TV Glow (A24)
Outstanding Supporting Performance
Yura Borisov, Anora (NEON)
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures)
Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson (Netflix)
Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw the TV Glow (A24)
Natasha Lyonne, His Three Daughters (Netflix)
Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing (A24) (WINNER)
Katy O’Brian, Love Lies Bleeding (A24)
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist (A24)
Adam Pearson, A Different Man (A24)
Brian Tyree Henry, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios)
Breakthrough Performer
Lily Collias, Good One (Metrograph Pictures)
Ryan Destiny, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios)
Maisy Stella, My Old Ass (Amazon MGM Studios)
Izaac Wang, Dìdi (Focus Features)
Brandon Wilson, Nickel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios) (WINNER)
This story was first published on Dec. 2 at 4:19 p.m.