Oscar front-runner Anora has won best film, best director and best lead actor at the Independent Spirit Awards.
The accolades for the film about a Brooklyn sex worker and her whirlwind affair with a Russian oligarch’s son has emerged in recent weeks as a front-runner for next week's Oscars (March 3 11am AEDT).
The Spirit Awards, held in a beachside tent in Santa Monica, California on Saturday, is the shaggier, more irreverent sister to the Academy Awards, celebrating the best in independent film and television.
In accepting the directing prize, Sean Baker spoke passionately about the difficulty of making independent films in an industry that is no longer able to fund riskier films. He said indies are in danger of becoming calling card films.
“The system has to change because this is simply unsustainable,” Baker said.
“We shouldn't be barely getting by.”
Anora’s competition included Ali Abbasi for The Apprentice, Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, Alonso Ruizpalacios for La Cocina and Jane Schoenbrun for I Saw the TV Glow.
Anora and I Saw the TV Glow, went into the night as the top nominees with six nominations each.
Host Aidy Bryant called it “Hollywood’s third or fourth biggest night”.
This year had several other possible Oscar winners celebrating. Kieran Culkin, considered an Oscar favourite, won the supporting performance award for A Real Pain.
His director, co-star and writer Jesse Eisenberg won best screenplay for the film about two cousins embarking on a Holocaust tour in Poland.
Culkin was not there to accept — he also missed his BAFTA win last weekend to tend to a family member — but other Oscar nominees like Mikey Madison, Demi Moore, Sebastian Stan and Colman Domingo were.
The documentary prize went to No Other Land, the lauded film by a Palestinian-Israeli collective about the destruction of a village in the West Bank which doesn’t have distribution.
It’s also a strong Oscar contender in a competitive category. The filmmakers were not in attendance to accept the award.
While the Spirit Award winners don’t always sync up with the academy, they can often reflect a growing consensus as in the Everything Everywhere All At Once year.
The awards limit eligibility to productions with budgets of $US30 million ($A47 million) or less, meaning more expensive productions like Wicked and Dune: Part Two were not in the running.
