This morning the nominees for the 2015 Spirit Awards, the indie film world’s version of the Oscars, were announced. Topping the list with six nods apiece was the dark comedy Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance); directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu it stars Michael Keaton as a former action movie star trying to revive his career with a Broadway production. Both were frontrunners for the awards, which celebrate their 30th anniversary this year.
Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age chronicle shot over eleven years, Nightcrawler, the gritty Jake Gyllenhaal drama about bottom-feeding news gatherers, and Selma, Ava DuVernay’s film about bloody 1965 civil rights protests led by Martin Luther King Jr. (the movie doesn’t come out until December), followed with five nominations apiece.
Whiplash, the story of a budding drummer who apprentices with a merciless band leader, and Love Is Strange, which stars Alfred Molina and John Lithgow as longtime companions forced to live apart due to financial constraints, each received four nominations.
Ana Lily Amirpour’s vampire Western noir, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, earned a nod for Best First Feature, and the director is also up for Kiehl’s Someone to Watch Award. It was fun to see Jenny Slate, the star of abortion comedy Obvious Child, join Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, Marion Cotillard in the Best Female Lead category.
In the non-competitive categories, Inherent Vice, the upcoming P.T. Anderson movie and the first Thomas Pynchon book to be adapted into a feature film, will receive the Robert Altman Award while Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, the story of a wrestling champ and his paranoid-schizophrenic coach, will receive the Special Distinction Award. Due to Spirit Awards guidelines, neither film was eligible for individual nominations.
Winners will be announced on Saturday, February 21, 2015 at the Spirit Awards, which are traditionally held the day before the Oscars in a tent on the beach in Santa Monica.
BEST FEATURE
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Producers: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher, Arnon Milchan, James W. Skotchdopole
Boyhood
Producers: Richard Linklater, Jonathan Sehring, John Sloss, Cathleen Sutherland
Love is Strange
Producers: Lucas Joaquin, Lars Knudsen, Ira Sachs, Jayne Baron Sherman, Jay Van Hoy
Selma
Producers: Christian Colson, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Oprah Winfrey
Whiplash
Producers: Jason Blum, Helen Estabrook, David Lancaster, Michael Litvak
BEST DIRECTOR
Damien Chazelle
Whiplash
Ava DuVernay
 Selma
Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Richard Linklater
Boyhood
David Zellner
Kumiko, The Treasure HunterÂ
BEST SCREENPLAY
Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski
Big Eyes
 J.C. Chandor
A Most Violent Year
Dan Gilroy
Nightcrawler
Jim Jarmusch
Only Lovers Left Alive
Ira Sachs & Mauricio Zacharias
Love is Strange
BEST FIRST FEATURE (Award given to the director and producer)
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
Producers: Justin Begnaud, Sina Sayyah
Dear White People
Director/Producer: Justin Simien
Producers: Effie T. Brown, Ann Le, Julia Lebedev, Angel Lopez, Lena Waithe
Nightcrawler
Director: Dan Gilroy
Producers: Jennifer Fox, Tony Gilroy, Jake Gyllenhaal, David Lancaster, Michel Litvak
Obvious Child
Director: Gillian Robespierre
Producer: Elisabeth Holm
She’s Lost Control
Director/Producer: Anja Marquardt
Producers: Mollye Asher, Kiara C. Jones
BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
Desiree Akhavan
Appropriate Behavior
Sara Colangelo
Little Accidents
Justin Lader
The One I Love
Anja Marquardt
She’s Lost Control
Justin Simien
Dear White People
JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD
(Given to the best feature made for under $500,000)
Blue Ruin
Writer/Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Producers: Richard Peete, Vincent Savino, Anish Savjani
It Felt Like Love
Writer/Director/Producer: Eliza Hittman
Producers: Shrihari Sathe, Laura Wagner
Land Ho!
Writers/Directors: Aaron Katz & Martha Stephens
Producers: Christina Jennings, Mynette Louie, Sara Murphy
Man From Reno
Writer/Director: Dave Boyle
Writers: Joel Clark, Michael Lerman
Producer: Ko Mori
Test
Writer/Director/Producer: Chris Mason Johnson
Producer: Chris Martin
BEST FEMALE LEAD
Marion Cotillard
The Immigrant
Rinko Kikuchi
Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
Julianne Moore
Still Alice
Jenny Slate
Obvious Child
Tilda Swinton
Only Lovers Left Alive
BEST MALE LEAD
André Benjamin
Jimi: All Is By My Side
Jake Gyllenhaal
Nightcrawler
Michael Keaton
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
John Lithgow
Love is Strange
David Oyelowo
Selma
BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Patricia Arquette
Boyhood
Jessica Chastain
A Most Violent Year
Carmen Ejogo
Selma
Andrea Suarez Paz
Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
Emma Stone
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Riz Ahmed
Nightcrawler
Ethan Hawke
Boyhood
Alfred Molina
Love is Strange
Edward Norton
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance
J.K. Simmons
Whiplash
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Darius Khondji
The Immigrant
Emmanuel Lubezki
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Sean Porter
It Felt Like Love
Lyle Vincent
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Bradford Young
Selma
BEST EDITING
Sandra Adair
Boyhood
Tom Cross
Whiplash
John Gilroy
Nightcrawler
Ron Patane
A Most Violent Year
Adam Wingard
The Guest
BEST DOCUMENTARY (Award given to the director and producer)
20,000 Days on Earth
Directors: Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard
CITIZENFOUR
Director/Producer: Laura Poitras
Stray Dog
Director: Debra Granik
The Salt of the Earth
Directors: Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and Wim Wenders
Virunga
Director/Producer: Orlando von Einsiedel
BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM (Award given to the director)
Force Majeure
(Sweden)
Director: Ruben Ă–stlund
Ida
(Poland)
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Leviathan
(Russia)
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Mommy
(Canada)
Director: Xavier Dolan
Norte, the End of History
(Philippines)
Director: Lav Diaz
Under the Skin
(United Kingdom)
Director: Jonathan Glazer
