While a number of snubbed Academy Award hopefuls — like Uncut Gems and its star Adam Sandler, The Farewell and Booksmart — won big Saturday at the 2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards, other films and stars who didn’t earn Oscar nominations still went home empty-handed from the Santa Monica beach celebration of the best in independent film.
Jennifer Lopez, who received a fair amount of attention in host Aubrey Plaza’s opening monologue, lost out on the best supporting actress award for her role in Hustlers to The Farewell‘s Zhao Shuzhen, ahead of The Farewell taking home the top prize for best feature. Hustlers also failed to win either of the other two prizes for which it was nominated.
Shia LaBeouf’s semiautobiographical drama Honey Boy, which went into Saturday’s awards show with four nominations, also failed to win any awards.
Other high-profile films up for multiple honors that failed to win any include three-time nominees Clemency, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Luce and double nominees Burning Cane, Diane and The Mustang, although Diane star Mary Kay Place did get a memorable shout-out in Plaza’s monologue.
Meanwhile, Give Me Liberty went into the ceremony with four nominations and only won one award, the John Cassavetes prize. Similarly, while five-time nominee The Lighthouse had a strong start, with Willem Dafoe tapped as best supporting actor with the first award of the night, it only won one other honor, for best cinematography, the only category for which the film is nominated at the Oscars on Sunday.
And while two women were nominated for best director — and support for female filmmakers was a theme of the awards show with the Lulu Wang-directed The Farewell taking home the top prize of best feature — that award ultimately went to Josh and Benny Safdie for Uncut Gems.
The Farewell’s best feature win was also somewhat of a surprise, given that Uncut Gems had picked up three awards earlier in the ceremony and Marriage Story had won two. Marriage Story, which took home best screenplay honors for writer-director Noah Baumbach in addition to the previously announced Robert Altman Award, is the only one of those three films nominated at this year’s Oscars.
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