Lily Gladstone Wins Big at the Star-Studded Gotham Awards

“That’s a fucking great movie,” Bob Odenkirk, who attended the 33rd annual Gotham Awards for the first time as a presenter, exclaimed when a clip from Anatomy of a Fall played during Monday’s ceremony. This wasn’t the only praise Justine Triet’s film would receive during the New York gala. It won both best international feature and screenplay for Triet and cowriter Arthur Harari, who spent the second of his two acceptance speeches paying tribute to Bob Dylan.

It was the first of several impromptu onstage moments—including Odenkirk’s admittedly “rewritten” remarks with fellow presenter and nominee Steven Yeun, plus a headline-making speech from Killers of the Flower Moon star Robert De Niro—that signaled the spiritual kickoff to awards season. Vanity Fair, an official partner of the Gotham Awards, was on the scene at Cipriani Wall Street, where stars including Bradley Cooper, Greta Lee, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie convened in the same place for the first time after months of strikes in Hollywood.

The Gotham Awards, which this year chose not to limit nominations to films with budgets below $35 million, retained the ceremony’s indie DNA by honoring smaller films in many top categories. A24’s Past Lives, written and directed by Celine Song, won the best-feature category over fellow nominees including Ira Sachs’s Passages, Tina Satter’s Reality, Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up, and A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One. Rockwell landed the award for breakthrough director in a category that had only female-identifying nominees. “I fought tooth and nail for every inch of, every piece of what you’ve seen on screen,” Rockwell said of her feature debut, which stars best lead performance nominee Teyana Taylor. “Just to be frank, it is very hard to tell a very culturally specific story when you look like this.”

Lily Gladstone got a major awards boost toward the end of the ceremony, delivering back-to-back acceptance speeches for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which received the Gotham Historical Icon and Creator Tribute Award, and the outstanding lead performance award, which she won for her role in Morrisa Maltz’s indie, The Unknown Country. Gladstone prevailed over fellow nominees including Lee, Taylor, and Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny. During each of her speeches, Gladstone thanked her filmmakers for highlighting the perspective of Native Americans. “I challenge everybody in this room who makes films: Invest. When you have a budget, invest it in the people,” she said. “Invest in the people that you’re telling your story about. Your film will be better for it. Your lives will be better for it.”

Charles Melton emerged victorious in the supporting performer category, which, like all of the Gothams’ acting categories, have been de-gendered since 2021. When the former Riverdale star’s name was called for his performance in Todd Haynes’s May December, his costars Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman leapt to their feet in joy. Melton seemed visibly shocked by his win over contenders including The Holdovers’ Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’s Rachel McAdams. “This is heavy, this is awesome,” he said of the angular trophy. “I just think about the 23 days we spent in Savannah, Georgia, filming. It was the greatest experience of my career.” Offstage, Melton became emotional as he embraced members of his team. It’s worth noting that the last two winners of this award at the Gothams—Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Ke Huy Quan and CODA’s Troy Kotsur—went on to win Academy Awards.

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