Gotham Awards: A24’s ‘A Different Man’ Wins Best Feature; ‘Sing Sing’, ‘Nickel Boys’ Also Score – Full Winners List
The Gotham Awards gave A24’s darkly comedic psychological thriller A Different Man its Best Feature award Monday in New York, with the ceremony as usual kicking off the movie awards season.
A Different Man, written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, stars Sebastian Stan as Edward, an aspiring actor who undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. His new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost. Renate Reinsve and Adam Pearson also star.
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The film beat out rivals like Cannes Palme d’Or winning Anora, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and Nickel Boys, which earned RaMell Ross Best Director. “I’m not the only person in the room who’s totally stunned by this, said Schimberg. “Considering the other nominees I though it would be hubris to prepare a speech, so I’m going to wing it.”
A24 had a great night tonight, as its Sing Sing won a pair of actor awards this evening at the ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street: Colman Domingo for Outstanding Lead Performer, and Clarence Maclin for Supporting Performer.
The film was also honored with the Gothams’ Social Justice Tribute where former inmates who also starred in the film, including Machlin, spoke with passion about their experience in a theater group at Sing Sing, the focus of the film. The prison was the first to test a program, now national, called Rehabilitation Through The Arts. The recidivism rate of RTA members is 3% compared to 60% nationally, he noted.
“Let’s keep doing the work, doing work that really matters, that makes a difference,” Domingo said accepting his award. “That’s what we can do right now. That can be the light and the darkness. And we know that. And so please hang on to that, as these men have shown me, they hung on to it and it’s changed their lives, and they’ve changed mine.”
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Another double winner was Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios’ Nickel Boys, whose helmer RaMell Ross won the inaugural Best Director award for his adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel. One of his film’s two young leads, Brandon Wilson, won the Breakthrough Performance honor.
Organized by the Gotham Film & Media Institute, this year’s Gothams saw Sean Baker and Neon’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anora come in leading the field with four nominations including for Best Feature alongside A24’s Babygirl and A Different Man, Nickel Boys and Amazon MGM’s Challengers.
Last year, A24’s Past Lives won in the category on its way to an Oscar Best Picture nom.
Also tonight, the Best Documentary Feature went to Antipode Films’ No Other Land, the vérité-style feature made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four directors over the course of five years. It provides a harrowing account of the destruction experienced by Masafer Yatta, a group of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank, during the Israel-Hamas war.
In addition, Sideshow and Janus’ All We Imagine as Light, the narrative feature debut of Payal Kapadia, was named Best International Film, while Azazel Jacobs’ script for Netflix’s His Three Daughters was named Best Screenplay. Vera Drew won Breakthrough Director for the zany superhero parody The People’s Joker.
In addition to Sing Sing, tribute honors included The Piano Lesson (Ensemble Tribute), Dune: Part Two‘s Denis Villeneuve (Director Tribute), Franklin Leonard and the Black List (Anniversary Tribute), Maria star Angelina Jolie (Performer Tribute), A Complete Unknown‘s Timothée Chalamet and James Mangold (Visionary Tribute) and Challengers star Zendaya (Spotlight Tribute).
Here’s the complete winners list.
Best Picture
A Different Man (A24)
Aaron Schimberg, director; Gabriel Mayers, Vanessa McDonnell, Christine Vachon, producers
Outstanding Lead Performance
Colman Domingo
Sing Sing (A24)
Outstanding Supporting Performance
Clarence Maclin
Sing Sing (A24)
Breakthrough Performer
Brandon Wilson
Nickel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)
Best Director
RaMell Ross
Nickel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)
Breakthrough Director
Vera Drew
The People’s Joker (Altered Innocence)
Best Documentary Feature
No Other Land (Antipode Films)
Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor, directors; Fabien Greenberg, B?rd Kj?ge R?nning, producers
Best International Feature
All We Imagine as Light (Sideshow and Janus Films)
Payal Kapadia, director; Julien Graff, Thomas Hakim, producers
Best Screenplay
Azazel Jacobs
His Three Daughters (Netflix)
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