Nominations for the 28th IFP Gotham Awards have been announced. Five films are up for Best Feature at the 2018 edition of the ceremony, and two are helmed by women: Josephine Decker’s “Madeline’s Madeline” and Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider.” The former centers on a teen who becomes part of a theater troupe and gets overly invested in her performance, and the latter is a portrait of a cowboy coping with the aftermath of a near-fatal rodeo accident.
Sandi Tan’s “Shirkers,” an investigation into the missing film she and her friends made as teens living in Singapore, is in the running for Best Documentary.
“I want [‘Shirkers’] viewers to rediscover their lost frenzies and forgotten appetites, to want to just go out and make stuff — totally DIY, fearless, free — without worrying about success or failure or if people think you’re uncool or weird,” Tan emphasized in an interview with us. “Try! Live! Love!”
Both Crystal Moselle (“Skate Kitchen”) and Jennifer Fox (“The Tale”) are up for the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award. “Skate Kitchen” tells the story of a group of girl skateboarders, and “The Tale” is inspired by Fox’s own history of sexual abuse.
“Stay focused on making more films. Make films about perspectives that are not covered as much,” Moselle told us when we asked her advice for other women filmmakers. ” Don’t let anything get in the way. I never take no for an answer when it’s something I really believe in.”
“I’ve been trying to tell this story since it happened to me in 1973,” Fox shared in an interview with us. “I even wrote a ‘story’ about it soon after it happened and handed it into my seventh grade English class as ‘fiction’! I’ve always been fascinated by this event in my life — why did this happen to me? Who were these coaches, really, that they would be attracted to a pre-prepubescent, flat chested, shy little girl?”
Deborah Davis — and collaborator Tony McNamara — and Tamara Jenkins are nominated for Best Screenplay for their respective films, royal comedy “The Favourite” and infertility dramedy “Private Life.”
Glenn Close (“The Wife”), Regina King (“Support the Girls”), and Michelle Pfeiffer (“Where is Kyra?”), Toni Collette (“Hereditary”), and Kathryn Hahn (“Private Life”) comprise the Best Actress category.
Series being recognized include Marti Noxon’s Gothic mystery “Sharp Objects,” Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s spy thriller “Killing Eve,” and Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “Alias Grace.”
“The Favourite’s” Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz will be honored with the Special Jury Award for Ensemble Performance.
The 28th IFP Gotham Awards will take place November 26 in New York City.
