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Our ongoing Member Lens feature spotlights current Film Independent Members to see how they got started, where they are now and what being part of Film Independent means to them. This month: Casting Director Nicole Arbusto.

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Nicole Arbusto loved theater & studied acting, but realized quickly that acting wasn’t for her. Still determined to be in the drama business, she worked at a theater in New York where she was introduced to casting. It was a perfect fit for someone who loved the art of acting and actors.

Throughout the years she’s worked in TV and film and fostered a relationship with director Azazel Jacobs, that started with 2011’s Terri, and most recently His Three Daughters (2024) which won her and her cast the Robert Altman Award at this year’s Independent Spirit Awards.

We spoke with her earlier this month about the award, the importance of casting smaller roles,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.News Bedknobs and Broomsticks.The military parade US president Donald Trump held on his own birthday was a boon for beleaguered Hollywood prop houses, many of which received a much-needed injection of capital by fulfilling rental orders for vintage guns and period costumes. “I’m no fan of Trump, hate him in fact, but this was a real life raft for us,” said one prop house manager.Since 2021, Nielsen has been tracking US viewership of traditional television as compared to streamers. In the month of May, Americans watched more television via streaming services than linear cable or broadcast for the first time.Related: In the first quarter of 2025, for the first time ever, more people in the United...

Recent Oscar winners Kieran Culkin and Mikey Madison, along with nominees Ariana Grande, Fernanda Torres, Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, are among the 534 distinguished artists and executives invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

These individuals have been recognized for their exceptional contributions to the art and science of filmmaking, representing a diverse spectrum of talent, perspectives and geographic backgrounds.

If all invitees accept, the Academy’s total membership will rise to 11,120, including 10,143 voting members. Invitees hail from 60 countries and territories outside the United States, contributing to the Academy’s increasing international profile.

“We are thrilled to welcome this esteemed class of artists, technologists and professionals into the Academy,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Janet Yang in a joint statement. “This year’s class embodies the diversity and global breadth of today’s film community, and their inclusion will continue to enrich the Academy’s mission and work.

Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks star as siblings with a complicated relationship in Prime Video’s The Better Sister. Based on Alafair Burke’s bestselling novel, the limited series will release all eight episodes on May 29, 2025.

“Chloe, a high-profile media executive, lives a picturesque life with her handsome lawyer husband Adam and teenage son Ethan by her side while her estranged sister Nicky struggles to make ends meet and stay clean,” reads Prime Video’s synopsis. “When Adam is brutally murdered, the prime suspect sends shockwaves through the family, reuniting the two sisters as they try to untangle a complicated family history to discover the truth behind his death.”

Jessica Biel stars as Chloe Taylor, Elizabeth Banks is Nicky Macintosh, and Corey Stoll is Adam Macintosh. Kim Dickens plays Detective Nancy Guidry, Maxwell Acee Donovan is Ethan Macintosh, Bobby Naderi is Detective Matt Bowen, Gabriel Sloyer is Jake Rodriguez, Gloria Reuben plays Michelle Sander,...

Elizabeth Olsen recognizes how Marvel has culturally changed in the zeitgeist since its popularity soared — and made her a blockbuster star in the process.

The actress, who originally hails from the indie world, has played Marvel‘s Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch, for a decade, including on TV’s “WandaVision.” Olsen said during NPR’s “Wild Card” podcast that she was at first “really proud” to star as a superhero. Now, though, she feels the conversation around Marvel projects has become tainted.

“When I started Marvel, I thought the movies were so, so great. I thought they were such great Greek-type scale stories that reflected politics and culture in a really lovely way,” Olsen said. “And so I felt really proud to jump into it. And then, within the last 10 years, it’s taken on this narrative of, like, it’s a hot take: whether an actor says they...

Cristin Miliotihas found her next project. The How I Met Your Mother star has been cast in Seven Sisters, an upcoming FX drama that will follow a family that will be forced to confront dark secrets after one of the members stars communicating with a voice no one else can hear. Elizabeth Olsen has been cast as the sibling who will make the family's worst nightmares come to life. Milioti's casting was made public a couple of weeks after it was announced that Elizabeth Olsen would be starring in the drama pilot as FX gears up for the cameras to start rolling in the near future.

Cristin Millioti recently found a new wave of success thanks to her role as Sofia Falcone in The Penguin. The Batman spinoff allowed the actress to step into the shoes of a major antagonist, while the titular villian portrayed by Colin Farrell attempted to...

From his father, a Holocaust survivor, cartoonist Art Spiegelman learned how to best utilize the limited space in a suitcase, knowledge that he then applied to his hand-drawn panels, where information has to be conveyed in a concise manner. An eminence in the realm of comics, Spiegelman is best known for “Maus,” the two-volume graphic novel about the Shoah — where the Nazis are depicted as cats and the Jews mice — based mostly on his dad’s firsthand recollections and Spiegelman’s need to grapple with the trauma he inherited from both of his parents. The subsequent, almost inescapable acclaim for “Maus” would in turn become another source of anguish for Spiegelman.

From co-directors Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin, the documentary “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse” is a linear account of how his career in comics evolved from underground publications to mainstream recognition. Constructed from talking-head conversations with Spiegelman and his friends and family,...

Mikey Madison as Ani and Mark Eydelshteyn as Ivan in ‘Anora’ (Courtesy of Neon)

Anora continues to pick up speed heading into the Oscars, scoring Critics Choice Awards and DGA wins and snagging a Best Feature win at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Anora also captured Best Director (Sean Baker) and Best Lead Performance (Mikey Madison) wins. A Real Pain and Didi each earned two awards during the February 22, 2025 Spirit Awards ceremony hosted by Aidy Bryant.

On the television side, Baby Reindeer dominated with three wins. The critically acclaimed limited series took home the Best Lead Performance (Richard Gadd), Best Supporting Performance (Nava Mau), and Best Breakthrough Performance (Jessica Gunning) wins. Other television winners included Shogun and How to Die Alone.

2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominees and Winners

Best Feature

Winner: Anora

Producers: Sean Baker, Alex Coco, Samantha Quan

I Saw the TV Glow

Producers: Ali Herting, Sam Intili, Dave McCary,...

When Azazel Jacobs was writing His Three Daughters, he only had one actor in mind for the role of Rachel, a seemingly self-isolating stoner who has been the lone witness to her stepfather’s decay as his life begins to end: Natasha Lyonne. In fact, the filmmaker behind The Lovers and French Exit had pictured the exact cast he ended up working with, including Carrie Coon and Elizabeth Olsen as Rachel’s sisters, who she finds herself confronted with after many years of estrangement.

In His Three Daughters, the women are connected by grief as they reunite in their father’s cramped New York City apartment to care for him in his final days. As Rachel, Lyonne is the only sister who — despite not being blood-related to the ailing patriarch, as he married her mother when she was a child — has already been living with him, a witness to his...

The Academy Awards nominations for 2025 will be announced on Thursday, January 23, by Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott. You might have to get up a little early to see the noms, though. That is especially true if you work in the Hollywood film industry.

The Oscars themselves will be held on Sunday, March 2, from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood and the host will be (thankfully) Conan O'Brien. Will he be part of a ceremony that hands out a lot of awards to Netflix movies? Maybe.

One Netflix film seems like not only a shoo-in to be nominated for Best Picture, but likely to win. More on that in a second. Here is everything else you need to know.

How to watch and stream the 2025 Oscar nomination (and see if Netflix gets lucky)

If you want to watch the awards being announced, you are in luck because there are an abundance of ways to tune in.

As the saying goes, sisterhood is powerful. It can also be maddening, enlightening, stifling, fortifying, and fascinating. Or in the case of Katie, Christina, and Rachel — played in the drama His Three Daughters by Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne, respectively — all of the above. Those seemingly contradictory complexities were precisely what writer-director Azazel Jacobs wanted to explore when he sat down to write the film, which sees the women convene at their father’s rent-controlled lower Manhattan apartment to support him at the end of his life. It’s a story about “sisters realizing not only their differences, but what’s connected them all these years and what could connect them after their parent is gone,” explains the French Exit filmmaker.

What surprised Jacobs was how this particular sisterhood so easily poured onto the page — and how he realized he was writing exclusively for Coon, Olsen, and Lyonne...

Anora, A Complete Unknown, Challengers, Hit Man, and Wicked are among the 2025 Writers Guild of America Awards nominees.

In Best Original Screenplay, Anora and Challengers are up against A Real Pain, Civil War, and My Old Ass. The Best Adapted Screenplay lineup features A Complete Unknown, Dune: Part Two, Hit Man, Nickel Boys, and Wicked.

The nominations were announced Wednesday, a week after the guild postponed its scheduled Jan. 9 announcement due to the Los Angeles wildfires.

As previously reported, dozens of scripts — including several top Oscar hopefuls — were ineligible for consideration this year. A screenplay is ineligible if it’s produced outside of the WGA’s collective bargaining agreement or written by a non-union member.

The ineligible adapted scripts were Golden Globe champ Conclave (by Peter Straughan), Emilia Pérez (by Jacques Audiard), I’m Still Here (by Walter Salles), Inside Out 2 (by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein with a...

I think it’s been a great year for cinema. Maybe even better than last year. According to my Letterboxd I didn’t give any film that came out in 2023 the heralded five stars but this year I’ve given that score twice, and a lot of four and a halves to go with. Scores are, of course, arbitrary, but it’s interesting to look back and see how things have played out on a macro level. It’s been a great year for cinema visits too, with lots of screenings locally as well as a day trip to the Prince Charles Cinema in London to watch David Lynch’s Inland Empire. What a wonderful, baffling fever dream (nightmare?) of a film. Watching it on the big screen with a loyal, and slightly stoned, audience was one of those experiences that just got me hyped about cinema again. Will definitely...

The end-of-year cascade of lists, ballots, scorecards, and rankings can mean a lot of the same: It’s all “Anora” this, “Conclave” that. While IndieWire’s own list of the best films of 2024 was crowned by RaMell Ross’s emotional, searching story of Black kids in Jim Crow South, “Nickel Boys,” there are still plenty of indies that didn’t get enough love this year even beyond our top 25.

Still, there’s some overlap in titles across IndieWire’s list of the Best Overlooked Indies of 2024. We picked 27 of them for brevity’s sake, meaning more than a few gems likely got left off, but here’s a good sampling of many of the indies snubbed by critics groups or more mainstream-leaning awards bodies so far this year.

Sure, “His Three Daughters,” Azazel Jacobs’s poignant tale of a dysfunctional trio of sisters staring down their father’s death,...

Some of the year’s top screenplays are not eligible for consideration at the 2025 Writers Guild of America Awards, the group’s voting ballot revealed on Monday.

Among the awards contenders for Best Adapted Screenplay that won’t receive nominations from the WGA despite being in the thick of the Oscar race are Conclave (by Peter Straughan), Emilia Pérez (by Jacques Audiard), I’m Still Here (by Walter Salles), Inside Out 2 (by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein with a story by LeFauve and Kesley Mann), The Outrun (by Nora Fingscheidt and Amy Liptrot), The Room Next Door (by Pedro Almodovar), Sing Sing (by Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar), and The Wild Robot (by Chris Sanders).

Several Best Original Screenplay hopefuls are also off the WGA ballot, including All We Imagine as Light (by Payal Kapadia), The Brutalist (by Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold), Didi (by Sean Wang), A Different Man...

Elizabeth Olsen has joined Julia Roberts on the cast list for Sam Esmail’s upcoming thriller ‘Panic Carefully.’

Plot details are under lock and key but it is said to be in the same vein as Esmail’s Emmy and Golden Globe winner ‘Mr. Robot,’ as well as ‘The Silence of the Lambs.’

Esmail and Chad Hamilton will produce for Email Corp., along with Scott Stuber, Roberts, Marisa Yeres Gill, and Lisa Gillan. Kevin McCormick and Chrystal Li are overseeing the project for Warner Bros. The production is set to begin in England in January.

Also in news – Jason Clarke joins Murdaugh Murders limited series

Email and Roberts are reuniting on the project after working together on ‘Leave the World Behind,’ an apocalyptic thriller, based on the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam, which premiered on Netflix in November 2023.

Recently, Olsen starred in a role opposite Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in ‘His Three Daughters,...

This morning saw the announcements of the 40th edition of the Film Independent Spirit Awards. The big picture nominees include titles like the film festival darling The Substance, as well as Anora, which is getting high accolades for Mikey Madison‘s performance and Sean Baker’s writing and direction. A24 would naturally snag a ton of nominations that total a whopping 19. This beats last year’s 11-nomination count.

The Independent Spirit Awards will be taking place on Saturday, February 22, 2025, and is set to be held at Santa Monica beach. Former Saturday Night Live cast member Aidy Bryant will return as the host. The in-person ceremony will be available to stream live on IMDb and Film Independent YouTube channels, and across other social platforms. You can find the full list of nominations, courtesy of Deadline, below.

Best Feature (Award given to the producer)

Anora

Producers: Sean Baker, Alex Coco, Samantha Quan...

Awards season is chugging right along. Next up are the Film Independent Spirit Awards, which honor the best and brightest in indie cinema and television. To qualify, a film's budget must not exceed $30 million, which means major blockbusters like Wicked and Gladiator II are, obviously, out of the running.

This year,...

In a refreshing and unpredictable swerve, Aaron Schimberg’s New York theater satire “A Different Man” picked up Best Feature at the 2024 Gotham Awards on Monday night. The Sundance premiere, about a washed-up actor (Sebastian Stan) with neurofibromatosis who undergoes facial reconstruction surgery only to be confronted by his much more confident double (Adam Pearson), shot on the Upper West Side in New York and has been an awards season dark horse with support from critics here.

Stan is also in the Oscar mix for his portrayal of Donald Trump in “The Apprentice,” which didn’t place on the Gotham nominations list. Bets were on “Anora” to win the Best Feature prize, so “A Different Man” winning was an unexpected treat.

At the event held at Cipriani on Wall Street, I bumped into Stan and Pearson early in the evening, with Pearson flying in from the U.K. over the...

The Gotham Film & Media Institute announced today the winners of the 34th edition of The Gothams at a ceremony held at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. The winner for Best Feature was A Different Man. The winner for Best International Feature was All We Imagine as Light. The winner for Best Documentary Feature was presented to No Other Land. The winner for Best Director was RaMell Ross for Nickel Boys. The winner for Best Screenplay was Azazel Jacobs for His Three Daughters. The winner for Breakthrough Director Gotham was Vera Drew for The People’s Joker. The winner for Outstanding Lead Performance was Colman ... Read more...

‘Anora’ y ‘The Brutalist’ se van de vacío. © Getty Pictures

Ya se conocen los ganadores a los Premios Gotham, unos galardones que premian lo mejor del cine independiente estadounidense y que dan el pistoletazo de salida oficial (como cada año) a la temporada de premios.

Este año, la sorpresa la ha dado A Different Man, que se ha hecho con el máximo galardón, el de Mejor Película, imponiéndose a Anora, Babygirl, Challengers y Nickel Boys. La película de Aaron Schimberg protagonizada por Sebastian Stan y Adam Pearson llegará a los cines en España de la mano de Vértigo Films. El filme gana así un importante impulso de cara a la temporada de premios. En los últimos diez años, ocho de las ganadoras de esta categoría en los Gotham fueron nominadas al Oscar a la Mejor Película y cinco de ellas lograron la estatuilla.

Las otras dos grandes triunfadoras de los...

The first major awards show of the season has spoken, and the future looks bright for A24 as A Different Man took best feature and Sing Sing top acting honours for Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin at the 34th Gotham Awards on Monday night.

Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anora, which began the night at Cipriani Wall Street in New York with the most nominations on four, went home empty-handed. However Sean Baker’s madcap romantic comedy is expected to figure prominently as awards season continues.

Aaron Schimberg’s dark comedy A Different Man premiered in Sundance and stars Sebastian Stan...

“A Different Man” was named the best independent film of the year at the 2024 Gotham Awards, which took place on Monday night in New York City.

The win for the drama starring Sebastian Stan came as a surprise at the end of a show in which “Nickel Boys” and “Sing Sing” had been the big winners, and in which “Anora” came in with the most nominations but left empty-handed.

In the gender-neutral acting categories, Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin won the lead and supporting awards for “Sing Sing.” Domingo’s category also included Pamela Anderson for “The Last Showgirl,” Nicole Kidman for “Babygirl,” Marianne Jean-Baptiste for “Hard Truths” and Mikey Madison for “Anora,” while Maclin’s included Yura Borisov for “Anora,” Guy Pearce for “The Brutalist,” Kieran Culkin for “A Real Pain” and Danielle Deadwyler for “Nickel Boys.”

“Nickel Boys” star Brandon Wilson won the award for breakthrough actor, while that film’s director,...

A24’s “A Different Man” won best feature at the 2024 Gotham Awards Monday night at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.

Meanwhile, “Sing Sing” swept the acting categories, with Colman Domingo winning for best lead performance and Clarence Maclin for best supporting performance.

Each category for nominations is decided by a different jury of critics, journalists and other industry professionals, and screening links must be provided to all its jury members. An entirely different group determines the winners. That’s in contrast with the Oscars or the BAFTAs, which are determined by actors, filmmakers and other artists who are in the entertainment industry.

In addition to the nominees, the Gothams bestowed special tributes to some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Oscar winner Angelina Jolie (Performer Tribute) for “Maria,” Emmy winner Zendaya (Spotlight Tribute) for “Challengers,” Timothée Chalamet and James Mangold (Visionary Tribute) for “A Complete Unknown,” and the...

When the 34th annual Gotham Awards took place in Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on Monday, December 2, the Oscar race officially began. The Gothams traditionally occupy a spot on the awards calendar as the first major film-centric ceremony of the season, giving fans their first opportunity to see the year’s biggest stars on the red carpet. The event also marks awards watchers’ first chance to gauge the state of the race.

The night’s top prize went to “A Different Man,” Aaron Schimberg’s A24 body transformation comedy that premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The film, which stars Sebastian Stan as a facially disfigured actor who undergoes an experimental surgery to boost his career, beat out Oscar frontrunners such as Sean Baker’s “Anora” and Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers.” The win could boost the award chances of both Schimberg and his stars Stan and Adam Pearson.

The Gotham Awards, honoring the best in American independent films, held their 34th annual event on Monday night, Dec. 2, launching the fall and winter awards season. So who were the big winners? Scroll down for the complete list of 2024 Gotham Awards champs in all categories, updating live throughout the night.

Nominees were decided by panels of film critics, journalists, festival programmers, and film curators. The winners were then selected by juries of writers, directors, actors, producers, editors, and others directly involved in filmmaking. Those small juries change from year to year and from category to category, so these awards can produce surprising results.

Telling the story of a young sex worker from Brooklyn who meets and impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, “Anora” led the nominations with four bids including Best Feature, as well Sean Baker for Best Director, actress Mikey Madison for Best Lead Performance and actor...

Tonight, New York City celebrated the finest in entertainment with the 2024 Gotham Awards. It’s the first step on the long road to the Oscars and finally giving awards watchers something to live for. Though the Gothams focus on independent movies, the Gotham Awards give us some sense of what...

‘Anora’, del director Sean Baker, encabeza las nominaciones. © Gotham| Universal Pictures | A24

Ya se conocen los nominados a los Gotham, unos galardones que premian lo mejor del cine independiente estadounidense y que dan el pistoletazo de salida oficial (como cada año) a la temporada de premios.

Este año, Anora, de Sean Baker – que, por cierto, acaba de estrenarse en cines españoles –, es la película con más nominaciones, con un total de cuatro. Muy de cerca le siguen Nickel Boys, de RaMell Ross, y I Saw the TV Glow, de Jane Schoenbrun, ambas con tres nominaciones cada una.

La 34 edición de los Premios Gotham se celebrará el 2 de diciembre. A continuación, os dejamos la lista completa de nominados:

Mejor PELÍCULA

Anora

Babygirl

Challengers

A Different Man

Nickel Boys

Mejor PELÍCULA Internacional

All We Imagine As Light

Green Border

Hard Truths

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell

Vermiglio

Mejor INTERPRETACIÓN Principal

Pamela Anderson,...

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in June ahead of it’s North American premiere at the TribecaFestival. Film Independent Presents a theatrical screening of Arzé (Lebanon’s Official Submission to the Academy Awards) which will be followed an in-person conversation with director Mira Shaib on Friday, November 8th.

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A film touching on serious subjects with lightness and humor, Arzé is a unique concoction. Ostensibly about the many different sectarian communities that make up Beirut, it becomes a heartfelt story about the family dynamic between two middle-aged sisters finding company and solace in each other as they raise a young man–son to one, beloved nephew to the other. All of this is wrapped in a timely contemporary comedy springing from a single incident: the theft of a scooter the family relies on to deliver pies they make and sell.

As director Mira Shaib puts it, “We wanted...

The first nominations of the season are in as contenders for the 34th Gotham Awards were unveiled on Tuesday, with Anora, Hard Truths, and The Last Showgirl among 39 features and 25 performances in the running for nine awards.

Nominees were announced via X and seesAnora, whichleads the way on four nods,Babygirl, Challengers, A Different Man, and Nickel Boys up for the best feature prize, while Pamela Anderson, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan, Mikey Madison, and Demi Moore are in the running for best lead performance.

Nickel Boys and I Saw The TV Glow each earned three nominations, while Hard Truths garnered two.

The nominations for the 34th Gothams Awards were unveiled on Tuesday, with Anora, Hard Truths, and The Last Showgirl among 39 features and 25 performances in the running for nine awards.

Nominees were announced via X and seesAnora, whichleads the way on four nods,Babygirl, Challengers, A Different Man, and Nickel Boys up for the best feature prize, while Pamela Anderson, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan, Mikey Madison, and Demi Moore are in the running for best lead performance.

International feature film nominees are All We Imagine As Light, Green Border, Hard Truths, Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, and Vermiglio.

The inaugural best...

Awards season is officially underway, according to the Gotham Film & Media Institute, and “Anora,” “Babygirl,” “Challengers,” “A Different Man,” and “Nickel Boys” are among the films in competition at this year’s Gotham Awards.

On Tuesday, the membership-based, non-profit independent film group announced its nominees for the 2024 Gotham Awards, the “start of the annual awards season” according to press materials. “Anora” led with four nominations, including Best Feature, Best Lead Performance for Mikey Madison, Best Supporting Performance for Yura Borisov, and Best Director for Sean Baker.

The other Best Feature nominees included “Babygirl” (which landed Nicole Kidman a nomination for Best Lead Performance), “Challengers,” “A Different Man” (which also received recognition for Adam Pearson in Best Supporting Performance), and “Nickel Boys” (which had two other nominations – Best Director for RaMell Ross and Breakthrough Performance for Brandon Wilson).

Other highlights among the nominees include Demi Moore and Pamela Anderson in the Best Lead Performance category,...

The Gotham Film & Media Institute announced today the nominations for the 34th edition of The Gothams, including 39 feature films and 25 performances in nine award categories. Leading the Best Feature nominees are Anora, Babygirl, Challengers, A Different Man, and Nickel Boys.

“We are proud to announce the nominees for The Gothams, selected by nominating committees who bring their independent perspective to the selection process. This year’s nominations celebrate voices from across the globe, embodying the growing embrace of international cinema by audiences everywhere. We look forward to celebrating our nominees and our Gotham tributes in a few weeks,” said Sharp.

The 2024 Gothams will be held live and in person at 7 pm on Monday, December 2nd at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.

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,...

Sean Baker’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Anora from Neon has nabbed four Gotham Award nominations today including Best Feature, Best Director, Outstanding Lead Performance for Mikey Madison and Outstanding Supporting Performance for Yura Borisov.

Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers from Orion/Amazon MGM was nominated for Best Feature. The studio’s Nickel Boys by RaMell Ross had noms for Best Feature and Best Director.

The indie-centric awards last year removed a longstanding budget cap on eligibility, an opening for bigger budget studio and streamer fare to submit for consideration.

A24 films were everywhere with multiple nominations for Babygirl, I Saw The TV Glow, Sing Sing and A Different Man. The Brutalist, Janet Planet and Love Lies Bleeding had noms as well.

The October noms and early December ceremony are industry bellwethers, coming at the start of awards season in the crush of fall festival buzz.

“We are proud to announce the nominees for The Gothams,...

“Anora,” “Babygirl,” “Challengers,” “A Different Man” and “Nickel Boys” have been nominated as the best films of 2024 by the 2024 Gotham Awards, the Gotham Film & Media Institute announced on Tuesday.

Sean Baker’s “Anora” led all films with four nominations, including Best Feature, Best Director and Outstanding Lead and Supporting Performances for Mikey Madison and Yuri Borisov.

In the gender-neutral Gotham acting categories, other nominees included Pamela Anderson for “The Last Showgirl,” Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce for “The Brutalist,” Nicole Kidman for “Babygirl,” Marianne Jean-Baptiste for “Hard Truths,” Demi Moore for “The Substance” and Saoirse Ronan for “The Outrun.”

Eligibility for the Gotham Awards used to be restricted to films that came in under a $35 million budget cap, but the awards did away with that rule last year. Currently, the definition of a film eligible for the Gothams is “filmmaking with a point of view … where the vision of an individual director,...

The Gotham Film and Media Institute announced Tuesday the nominations for the 34th annual Gothams, honoring 39 features and 25 performances across nine award categories. Nominees were chosen by a group of journalist- and programmer-led committees. This is the first major awards body to share nominations for the year in film, and here, the Gothams are led by “Anora,” “Babygirl,” “Challengers,” “A Different Man,” and “Nickel Boys” in the Best Feature category.

“We are proud to announce the nominees for The Gothams, selected by nominating committees who bring their independent perspective to the selection process. This year’s nominations celebrate voices from across the globe, embodying the growing embrace of international cinema by audiences everywhere. We look forward to celebrating our nominees and our Gotham tributes in a few weeks,” said Gotham Film and Media Institute executive director Jeffrey Sharp.

Per the Institute, nominees are chosen by committees of film critics, journalists,...

It’s officially awards season, baby. While there are still more than four months to go before we cross the finish line at the Academy Awards, this afternoon the Gotham Awards—honoring independent film—announced their crop of 2024 nominees, officially kickstarting campaign season and offering the first clues about which...

Netflix recently hosted a screening and panel discussion for “His Three Daughters,” the new family drama film starring Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, and Carrie Coon. The three cast members joined writer/director/producer Azazel Jacobs for a Q&a moderated by Rian Johnson at The London West Hollywood, followed by an intimate reception with drinks and apps.

“His Three Daughters” is a 2025 Oscars contender in categories like Best Picture, Best Director for Jacobs, Best Supporting Actress for Lyonne, Olsen, and Coon, Best Original Screenplay for Jacobs, plus several below-the-line races. The film has an impressive 97% score at Rotten Tomatoes, with critics singling out its “thorny family dynamics” and providing a “compelling showcase” for the three stars who play estranged sisters looking after their ailing father.

SEEAzazel Jacobs (‘His Three Daughters’) on being certain he should cast Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen

Speaking about the themes of the film, Jacobs recalled,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

The new 4K restoration of Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is now playing.

Bam

Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer’s Candy Mountain begins screening in a new restoration. (Watch our exclusive trailer debut.)

Museum of the Moving Image

Monsters Inc. and What About Bob? play in a Frank Oz retrospective; Chantal Akerman’s American Stories: Food, Family and Philosophy screens on Sunday; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre shows throughout the weekend.

Metrograph

The Decameron, Fellini Satyricon, In America, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Legend of Suram Fortress, Corpse Bride, All the President’s Men, The Candidate, We Won’t Grow Old Together, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, and Momma’s Man show on 35mm; an Azazel Jacobs series and Follow the Money: Kimberly Reed Selects begin; The Phantom of Ester Krumbachová, Rabbit on the Moon,...

High school is hard enough. Even popular kids feel uncomfortable in their own skin, go through heartaches, and detentions. But for the oddballs and misfits who dare to be different, high school is a whole new level of toughness. Azazel Jacobs understands this, and directed one of the most sensitive, unsettling character studies of a teenage boy who doesn't belong, and doesn't care to. Terri stars John C. Reilly as a vivacious oddball and groundbreaking educator, with an extraordinary Jacob Wysocki playing the titular character.

Since the academy expanded the Best Picture category at the Oscars in 2010, Best Original Screenplay has gone to writers of a wide-range of genres: dramas; comedies (“Midnight in Paris”); biopics; true-life stories (“Spotlight”); memoirs (“Belfast”); period pictures (“Django Unchained”); war movies (“The Hurt Locker”); sci-fi (“Her”), thrillers horror (“Get Out”) and fantasies (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) . (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Original Screenplay.)

Of this year’s top 10 contenders for Best Original Screenplay, nine were written, at least in part, by the directors. The exception is “Challengers,” which Justin Kuritzkes wrote for director Luca Guadagnino. He also adapted the William S. Burroughs novel “Queer” for this busy helmer and he could well contend over in Best Adapted Screenplay for that.

“Challengers” is, at its heart, a romance. Love, albeit short-lived, is also the subject of the frontrunner in this race, Sean Baker‘s “Anora.

We’re fully in the fall now, which means a few things for movie fans — summer blockbuster season is behind us (which means some of the biggest hits are about to hit home video), spooky season is very much here and, with festival season underway, awards contenders are starting to roll out in earnest.

All told, there’s a lot to watch out for on streaming right now, so if you’re stuck on endless scroll and not sure what to watch right now, not to worry, here’s a curated list of the best new movies on Netflix in September 2024.

“Jaws” (Universal Pictures) “Jaws” (1975)

Starting things off with a bonafide classic: summer may be over, but it’s never a bad time to watch Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws.” Credited as the first summer blockbuster in cinematic history, the film didn’t just eat up the box office, it’s...

Early in her career, Natasha Lyonne auditioned for a major movie role that went to Neve Campbell. It may be surprising to learn that the film was John McNaughton's 1998 erotic thriller Wild Things, known for its twists and turns and sexual content (and seems worlds away from the roles we've seen Lyonne in).

At a screening and Q&a for her new film, His Three Daughters, Lyonne recalled the Wild Things audition process (via Variety). Lyonne, who describes the roles she would typically read for as "a tough chick with black eyeliner," was told to "dress like a Robert Palmer girl" for her Tracy audition. Lyonne slicked her hair back and wore heavy makeup. As it turns out, that's not exactly what they were looking for.

"I was nailing it. But I was definitely not getting that part. It was not what they were looking for."

According to Lyonne,...

Like sisters are supposed to, the stars of “His Three Daughters” will support each other throughout this year’s Oscar race.

Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen — all praised for their performances in Azazel Jacobs’ family drama — have chosen to submit for Oscar consideration in the supporting actress category, it was revealed to Variety exclusively. In addition, co-stars Jovan Adepo, Jay O. Sanders and Rudy Galvan will be vying for supporting actor consideration.

Read: You can see all Academy Award predictions in all 23 categories on one page on the Variety Awards Circuit: Oscars.

Written and directed by Jacobs, “His Three Daughters” follows three estranged sisters reuniting to care for their terminally ill father in his Brooklyn apartment. The film premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and was acquired by Netflix for a reported $7 million. It has since received glowing reviews, maintaining a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Variety’s chief film critic,...

New to Netflix on September 20, 2024, His Three Daughters is a refreshing arthouse drama written and directed by Azazel Jacobs. The acclaimed dramedy concerns three disparate and estranged sisters who reunite in New York to care for their sick father, forced to confront their past while living together under a single roof for the first time in years. When the estranged siblings reconnect after years apart, the character-driven story portrays a tender bonding moment between two sisters, Katie (Carrie Coon) and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), that hints at their intimate childhood.

The bonding moment features Katie and Rachel speaking in a silly, fabricated language they made up as kids, that they only understand. A curious combination of Pig Latin and other ancient dead languages, the touching sequence has become such a popular topic online that Azazel has addressed the conversation and provided more context to fans about where the language came from.

A new family drama starring Elizabeth Olsen has surprised viewers by becoming one of Netflix’s most watched movies. The film, titled “His Three Daughters,” follows three estranged sisters who reunite to care for their sick father. It now sits at number five on Netflix’s top 10 list.

The movie stars Elizabeth Olsen, Natasha Lyonne, and Carrie Coon as the three sisters. They must work through complicated relationships and memories from their past. Audiences have connected strongly with the touching story of family healing. Film critics also highly praise “His Three Daughters,” awarding it a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Director Azazel Jacobs creates a blend of emotion and humor in his films. He brought that style to telling this family’s story. Jacobs is known for movies such as “French Exit” and “The Lovers.” His previous works skillfully mixed darkness with deeply human themes. Critics say he refined this talent for his latest film.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for His Three Daughters.

Christina and Katie have their own special language in the new Netflix film His Three Daughters. The outstanding albeit small cast of His Three Daughters is led by Carrie Coon's domineering Katie, Elizabeth Olsen's eccentric Christina, and Natasha Lyonne's rugged and down-to-earth Rachel. His Three Daughters was released on Netflix on September 20, 2024 following a two-week theatrical run in select theaters. The film, written and directed by Azazel Jacobs, originally premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 9, 2023.

His Three Daughters debuted with a near-perfect 99% Rotten Tomatoes score upon its Netflix release, a score that has slightly dropped to a very impressive 97%. As of the time of writing, His Three Daughters is the fourth most popular movie on Netflix at the end of its opening weekend on the streaming platform. By the end of His Three Daughters, it's established that Katie...

Warning: Spoilers ahead for His Three Daughters.

Carrie Coon's character in the Netflix family drama film His Three Daughters fights very hard to get her father's Dnr signed. The outstanding albeit small cast of His Three Daughters is led by Coon's domineering Katie, Elizabeth Olsen's eccentric Christina, and Natasha Lyonne's rugged and down-to-earth Rachel. Katie is the oldest and most demanding sister of Christina and Rachel in His Three Daughters. She holds herself and her sisters to high expectations, which has driven some wedges in between their dynamic over the years. Her animosity toward Rachel is particularly notable and tense throughout the Azazel Jacobs film.

His Three Daughters was released on Netflix on September 20, 2024 following a two-week theatrical run in select theaters. The film originally premiered over a year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2023. The film debuted with a near-perfect 99% Rotten Tomatoes score upon its Netflix release,...

Netflix’s latest family drama, His Three Daughters, weaves an emotional, bittersweet narrative involving three estranged sisters, Katie, Rachel, and Christina, trying to make amends with each other as they reunite during their father’s final days. Director Azazel Jacobs adds a spark of brilliance to a simple premise through the nuanced characterization of the three sisters, whose relation to each other and their dying father adds relatable, grounded dynamics. The pent-up emotions that led the sisters to grow apart from each other are expressed bit by bit, but sentimentality never bogs down the story—instead, the palpable tension of conversations and silence adds an interesting depth to the plot.

Out of the three sisters, Rachel, played by actor Natasha Lyonne, stands out with her measured, emotionally suppressed outlook, conveying much about the inner turbulence, vulnerabilities, and insecurities. It is crucial to comprehend the connection, or the lack of it she shared with her sisters,...

Death has been on Elizabeth Olsen’s mind lately. It started — or, rather, became much more acute — on a recent helicopter ride. The actress was on an East Coast press tour for her new movie, His Three Daughters, and Netflix scheduled a junket day in New York City, followed by a screening out in the Hamptons. The tight turnaround meant that Olsen, her co-star Natasha Lyonne and a studio rep had only one way to get there in time.

“I’ll never do it again,” she says. “It was 45 minutes straight of me creating a narrative about how I’m going to die.” As she’s telling this story, she divulges that, actually, she thinks about her own death all the time. The notion of the chopper hurtling over greater Long Island takes its place in line behind car accidents and random acts of violence.

“Whenever I’m stopping at a red light,...