Women will dominate the tribute awards at the upcoming Nantucket Film Festival. A press release announced that Nicole Holofcener, Lynn Novick, and Jenny Han will each be honored at the 2023 festival, taking place June 21-26.
Oscar-nominated writer-director Holofcener will take home the Screenwriters Tribute Award and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Novick will be sharing the Special Achievement in Documentary Storytelling Award with long-time collaborator Ken Burns. The New Voices in Television award will be presented to Han, the creator of Prime Video series “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and the author of the book the romance is based on.
“Nicole has helped define the dramedy genre, and staked out women’s inner lives as the terrain of serious filmmaking,”said festival exec director Mystelle Brabbée. “For decades, Americans have turned to Ken and Lynn’s documentaries to understand ourselves and our history. And Jenny has become the great chronicler of the journey from adolescence to adulthood for a generation of young women.”
Women scribes including Nancy Meyers and Leslie Dixon have previously won the Screenwriter Tribute Award. Past recipients of the Special Achievement in Documentary Storytelling Award include Rory Kennedy, Barbara Kopple, and Liz Garbus. Previous winners of the New Voices Award include Siân Heder, Leslye Headland, and Lake Bell.
Holofcener received an Oscar nomination for co-writing “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the story of a struggling writer who forges letters from famous literary figures for money. Her latest film will premiere at Sundance Film Festival in January. Titled “You Hurt My Feelings,” the comedy stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a novelist whose marriage takes a turn when she overhears her husband offering his honest opinion of her new book.
Along with Burns, Novik has “created nearly 100 hours of acclaimed programming for PBS,” per the press release. These series, which include “Baseball” and “The Vietnam War,” have received six Emmy Awards. She made her solo directorial debut with the four-part 2017 docuseries “College Behind Bars.”
Han is best known for authoring the “To All the Boys” YA series, which was adapted into the hit Netflix franchise led by Lana Condor. She serves as showrunner on “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” which will be returning for a second season. She’s co-showrunning “XO, Kitty,” an upcoming Netflix series inpired by the “To All the Boys” film franchise and book series. It follows Kitty, the youngest Covey sister.
