All too often awards shows forget that women directors exist. The 2020 IFP Gotham Awards is putting them front and center. Nominations for the 30th annual installment of the ceremony have been announced, and women-directed pics account for all five titles up for Best Feature. Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow” is among those in the running for the prize. The 19th century-set drama about friends who start a business leads in nominations: it is up for four awards.
Kitty Green’s Harvey Weinstein-inspired drama “The Assistant” and Natalie Erika James’ intergenerational horror story “Relic” are also competing for Best Feature. Eliza Hittman’s abortion drama “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” and Chloé Zhao’s Frances McDormand-starrer “Nomadland” round out the category.
Last year two women-directed pics were nominated for Best Feature: Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell” and Lorene Scafaria’s “Hustlers.”
Women account for two of the five nominees up for the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award. Radha Blank is being recognized for “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” her comedy about a struggling playwright who discovers a passion for rapping, and Channing Godfrey Peoples for “Miss Juneteenth,” a portrait of a former beauty queen and her teen daughter.
Two docs in the running for Best Documentary are helmed by women: Ramona S. Diaz’s “A Thousand Cuts” and Garrett Bradley’s “Time.” The former sees journalists fighting to keep democracy alive in the Philippines and the latter follows a prison abolitionist.
Maïmouna Doucouré’s “Cuties,” a coming-of-age story about an 11-year-old Senegalese immigrant living in Paris, and Fernanda Valadez’s “Identifying Features,” a drama about a mother searching for her son who went missing on his way to the U.S. border, are nominated for Best International Feature.
Reichardt and Blank are both up for Best Screenplay.
Best Actress nominees include McDormand for “Nomadland,” Nicole Beharie for “Miss Juneteenth,” and Yuh-Jung Youn for “Minari,” the story of a Korean-American family whose lives are upended with the arrival of their grandmother.
Sidney Flanigan (“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”), Jasmine Batchelor (“The Surrogate”), and Kelly O’Sullivan (“Saint Frances”) are among the nominees in the Breakthrough Actor category.
The IFP Gotham Awards ceremony will be held January 11. The show will be presented live “in a hybrid format featuring virtual interactive tables in order to follow health and safety protocols brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic,” a press release details.
Head over to Deadline to check out all of the nominees, including the TV categories. Series up for honors include “I May Destroy You” and “P-Valley.”
