Awards season has officially kicked off with the nominations for the 2024 Gotham Awards, which is the first major stop on the trophy trail (the ceremony is on December 2), though the Gothams are rather hit or miss when it comes to overlap with the Oscars. They’re not the best predictor because 1) they focus on independent cinema, so this year’s crop of nominees, for instance, don’t have to contend with films like Gladiator II, and 2) they’re nominated by critics, journalists, and festival programmers and curators, not people who vote on things like the Oscars.
The Gothams, like the Film Independent Spirit Awards, exist to highlight films that often get overlooked during the Oscar race, but also like the Spirit Awards, it’s become a big party, and you can expect a lot of celebrities who also want to win Oscars to show up.
This year’s nominees, though, are showing a lot of overlap with potential Oscar nominees. Sean Baker’s Anora leads with four nominations, including an Outstanding Lead Performance nomination for star Mikey Madison, who is also favored for an Oscar nom. (The Gothams don’t have gendered categories, they nominate ten performers for lead and supporting roles, respectively.) Sean Baker also earned a nomination for Best Director and Best Feature for Anora, while Yuri Borisov was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Performance. Borisov is a longer shot for the Oscars, but Anora is on track to be a Best Picture contender.
Other directing nominees include Jane Schoenbrun for I Saw the TV Glow—Justice Smith was also nominated for Outstanding Lead Performance for that film—and RaMell Ross for Nickel Boys. Breakthrough Director nominees include Vera Drew for The People’s Joker—a film Warner Bros. Discovery tried to kill—and India Donaldson for Good One. Speaking of Good One, star Lily Collias received a Breakthrough Performer nomination, as did Izaac Wang for his role in Dìdi.
The acting nominations are very strong, ranging from A-listers like Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), Demi Moore (The Substance), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), and Saoirse Ronan (The Outrun); to up and comers like Anora’s Mikey Madison and Katy O’Brian (Love Lies Bleeding); to stalwarts like Brian Tyree Henry (The Fire Inside), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths), and Natasha Lyonne (His Three Daughters).
Pamela Anderson is also starting her trophy run here, with a nomination for The Last Showgirl, and Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) and Guy Pearce (The Brutalist) are gaining momentum for their supporting performances, I fully expect to see a lot of them over the next five (FIVE) months. It’s also great to see A Different Man’s Adam Pearson nominated for Outstanding Supporting Performance, which might convince a few more people to check out that movie. It’s a little too weird for the Oscars, but Pearson’s performance is so good, maybe he can generate some momentum off of this nomination. Similarly, Danielle Deadwyler was nominated for The Piano Lesson, and this time I’m hoping awards voters actually watch her damn movie and we don’t get a repeat of the Riseborough situation in 2023 (which had as much to do with voters not watching Till as it did the To Leslie grassroots campaign).
A notable omission is Pablo Larraín’s Maria, which is not eligible for Best Feature, but is eligible for Best International Feature (it’s an Italy-Germany-US co-production). Historically, though, Larraín doesn’t fare well with this crowd. Going back to 2016, the only one of his films to receive a Gotham nomination is Jackie, for Natalie Portman’s performance. This is what I mean about Oscar overlap—Angelina Jolie is one of the top contenders for a Best Actress nomination, and that film could also pull a lot of nominations out of the tech/craft categories, but the Gothams don’t even blink at it.
And then there’s the outright glaring omission of A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothee Chalamet. That movie should be catnip to a group like the Gotham Awards, but it wasn’t even submitted for consideration. So the quintessential New York indie film award ceremony will be bereft of Timmy-Bob, the quintessential New York indie film moppet. Maybe that Challengers nomination for Best Feature will be enough to entice Zendaya out for the night, instead.
See the full list of nominees here.
Here is Danielle Deadwyler at a MoMA event last week.
