Uncut Gems, Marriage Story and Lulu Wang’s Farewell Rule Spirit Awards

With the Oscars and the Golden Globes totally ignoring and overlooking female directors this year, the Independent Spirit Awards showed then who’s boss by handing its Best Feature award to Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, Best First Feature to Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart and Best Documentary to Julia Reichert’s American Factory.

The Farewell is the second Chinese language movie to win at the Spirit Awards since 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Wang’s win is only the second time a female solo director has picked up the Best Feature honor.  In 2003, Sofia Coppola won for Lost in Translation and Valerie Faris shared a win in that category with co-director Jonathan Dayton for Little Miss Sunshine in 2006.

In her acceptance speech Wang declared, “…So shadowing great film programs are great, but really what women need is the job…Just give them the frickin’ job.”

Another breakthrough moment happened is when it was recognized that all five nominees in the Best Supporting Female category were women of color.  Even though the Best Feature win most likely won’t carry over to Oscars tomorrow, other wins potentially will result in repeat was for Renee Zellweger for Best Actress for Judy, American Factory for Best Documentary and Parasite for Best International Film.

Aubrey Plaza was the perfect host and fantabulously hilarious…Take a look at the opening monologue.

Other memorable moments and one of the best acceptance speech of the night  went down when Best Directors for Uncut Gems, Benny and Josh Safdie hysterically talked over each other in their acceptance speech. Of course, they were only topped by Sandler, launching into character voices and then exclaimed, “…a few weeks ago when I was snubbed by the Academy, it reminded me how I was overlooked for the year book in the superlative category of ‘Best Looking’ to the feather-headed douche bag Feather Jenkins,” joked Sandler. He also thanked the pic’s producer Scott Rudin for introducing him to those  “homeless Rabbi’s” who actually turned out to be the Safdie brothers.  Here’s Sandler’s hysterical speech…

Here is the Complete List of Winners…

Below is today’s full list of Independent Spirit Awards 2020:

BEST FEATURE – The Farewell

BEST FIRST FEATURE – Booksmart

BEST FEMALE LEAD – Renee Zellweger, Judy

BEST MALE LEAD – Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems

BEST DIRECTOR Benny and Josh Safdie – Uncut Gems

BEST DOCUMENTARY – American Factory, directors Julia Reichart, Steven Bognar

BEST SUPPORTING MALE – Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE – Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell

BEST SCREENPLAY– Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY – See You Yesterday, Fredrica Bailey, Stefon Bristol

BEST EDITING – Uncut Gems – Benny Safdie, Ronald Bronstein

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – Jarin Blaschke, The Lighthouse

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM – Parasite, Bong Joon Ho

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD – Marriage Story
Noah Baumbach, Douglas Aibel, Francine Maisler, Alan Alda, Laura Dern, Adam Driver, Julie Hagerty, Scarlett Johansson, Ray Liotta, Azhy Robertson, Merritt Wever

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD – Give Me Liberty

PRODUCERS AWARD — Mollye Asher

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD -Rashaad Ernesto Green, director of Premature

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD Nadia Shihab, director of Jabboland

THE BONNIE AWARD – Kelly Reichardt