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Quincy Jones worked with Michael Jackson on three of his biggest albums. The pair worked incredibly well together, and Jones recalled having fun in the studio with Jackson. Still, there were some elements of working with the singer that Jones did not like. He felt very uncomfortable with the animals Jackson brought into the studio with him.

Quincy Jones said he felt a little uncomfortable in the studio with Michael Jackson

Jones said that when he got in the studio with Jackson, the atmosphere was always light and fun.

“It was as loose as you can get! We’d be joking and having fun,” he told The Guardian. “Are you kidding? You gotta know how to party [laughs]. If you get uptight, the music’s going to sound like nothin’. I used to say, ‘Always leave a little room for God to walk in the room.’”

Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones...

Anonymous Content broke down its production moves in Spain and Latin America here at Iberseries & Platino Industria in Madrid, Tuesday.

Barbara Teixeira, CEO of Anonymous Content Brasil and Beatriz Campo, the company’s MD for Spain, talked new projects and plans to cooperate across the Spain and Lat-Am parts of the business.

Teixeira said her priorities are at both the big and small ends of the market – and swerving the stuff in the middle. “My focus right now is things that are smaller, simple and contained in the type of story and the type of production model, or the big ambitious swings,” she said. “I think there’s very little room in the market right now for the medium ground. Things that are small and sort of simple and easy to produce and that people connect to on a simple emotional level are amazing, and then there are the big...

Exclusive: Oscar, BAFTA, WGA and Emmy nominee Ramin Bahrani has signed with Grandview.

Bahrani is the writer, director and producer of such films as Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo, 99 Homes and The White Tiger. His films have all premiered at the Venice or Cannes film festivals and additionally screened at Telluride and Toronto. His debut feature documentary, 2nd Chance, premiered at Sundance and was released by Showtime.

Additionally, Bahrani has directed TV pilots for Universal Studios and Apple, and he won the PGA Award in 2019 for his work on the HBO movie Fahrenheit 451.

Bahrani’s films also include Alex Camilleri’s Sundance- and Spirit Award-winning feature Luzzu (2020) and his forthcoming Zejtune; and Alexandre Moratto’s Spirit Award-winning Brazilian debut feature Socrates (2018, and his Venice-winning 7 Prisoners (2021), Saim Sadiq’s Cannes-winning Pakistani debut Joyland (2022), Angus MacLachlan’s Sundance premiere A Little Prayer (2023) and Joshua Oppenheimer’s forthcoming debut feature The End.

Exclusive: M88 has signed filmmaker Alexandre Moratto for representation.

Moratto’s debut feature film Socrates, made with Unicef on a budget of $20k with a cast and crew of teenagers from São Paulo’s low-income communities, earned him the ‘Someone to Watch’ Independent Spirit Award.

The film follows the titular character, a Black teen from the coast of Brazill and his journey to overcome poverty, grief following his mother’s death and homophobia. It was produced by directors Ramin Bahrani (The White Tiger) and Fernando Meirelles (City of God), who also produced his sophomore feature Netflix’s 7 Prisoners.

The film, starring Christian Malheiros and Rodrigo Santoro, follows Mateus, a poor 18-year-old from rural Brazil who leaves home for what sounds like a solid opportunity—a job at a metal scrapyard in São Paulo, earning enough money to help support his mother and sisters back home. Matheus and a small...

Sheila Benson, who was chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1981-1991, died February 23 in Seattle. She was 91.

A gregarious enthusiast who always hoped for the best when the lights went down, Benson came from a family with strong ties to the film industry. She was born in New York City, where her father, Dwight Franklin, created dioramas for the American Museum of Natural History before heading for Hollywood in the mid-1920s to work on the Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler The Black Pirate. For the next 25 years, Franklin worked in various capacities on many films, notably handling costumes on several major Cecil B. DeMille productions.

Benson’s mother, Mary C. McCall Jr., studied at Vassar and Trinity College in Dublin, and in 1932 published her first novel, The Goldfish Bowl. The book was bought by Warner Bros and that same year was made into a film called It’s...

The Brazilian Filmmakers Collective will launch formally on February 16 at the Berlin Film Festival’s European Film Market.

Formed by a dozen Brazilian filmmakers, and counting such acclaimed directors Ramin Bahrani (Netflix’s The White Tiger) and Fernando Meirelles (City of God) on the creative advisory board, the collective was created last year as a hub for Brazilian filmmakers working abroad to share resources, opportunities and promote creative enrichment.

The group’s directorial work has premiered at film festivals around the world including Toronto, Venice, Sundance, SXSW, New York and more. Members are at similar stages in their careers: they have each premiered their first or second feature films at A-list festivals or are working on their first feature projects with the support of competitive A-list fellowships such as the Torino Screenwriting Lab, TIFF Filmmaker Lab, Sundance Labs, Tribeca Institute Fellowships, Sffilm Residencies, Hola Mexico, and more.

Despite the differences in approach and styles,...

Alexandre Moratto’s feature about workers lured into modern-day slavery in Brazil takes an unexpected turn

You would expect a film about human trafficking and modern-day slavery to be devastating, and this Brazilian drama duly horrifies. But it doesn’t evolve in quite the direction you might anticipate which, strictly from a film point of view, makes it much more interesting than your standard social realism. With a Brechtian approach that compels the viewer to question both their own ethical assumptions and tacit complicity in a worldwide consumerist culture that exploits people all over the planet, 7 Prisoners is deeply uncomfortable but utterly compelling viewing.

The film reteams director Alexandre Moratto, making his second feature-length work after Sócrates in 2018 with young actor Christian Malheiros, who starred as the title character. This time Malheiros plays Mateus, a young man from Brazil’s deep inland farm country, who has accepted a job offer...

7 Prisoners had been expceted to fly the flag.

In an unexpected move the Brazilian Academy of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts has selected Aly Muritiba’s Private Desert (Deserto Particular) over Alexandre Moratto’s 7 Prisoners as its submission for the 2022 Academy Awards.

Private Desert premiered in Venice Giornate Degli Autori where it won the Bnl People’s Choice Award. Antonio Saboia stars as a police officer who is kicked off the force for violent behaviour and sets off in search of his online love.

The film shot in Sobradinho, Juazeiro, Bahia, and Curitiba and is produced by Grafo Audiovisual and Fado Filmes.

“Socrates” director Alexandre Moratto returns with “7 Prisoners,” a lean and intense moral thriller about a smart kid who finds trouble in São Paulo. The Brazilian hostage film world-premiered to acclaim at the Venice Film Festival and is now set to be released in theaters and on streaming globally from Netflix this November. The streaming giant is eyeing an Oscar push for the film as a strong contender for Best International Feature out of Brazil. Exclusive to IndieWire, watch the trailer for the film below.

Here’s the synopsis courtesy of Netflix:

18-year-old Mateus (Christian Malheiros) hopes to provide a better life for his working-class family in the countryside. Accepting a new job in São Paolo, he is shuttled into the city with a handful of other teenage boys from his town, unaware of what awaits them: exhausting work in a scrapyard and their identity cards seized by a vicious taskmaster and exploiter,...

Near the beginning of “7 Prisoners,” the illuminated high-rise skyline of São Paulo draws murmurs of admiration from a group of young rural Brazilians as a minivan ferries them into the city for the first time in their lives. They’ve never personally known their world to be so big, though within minutes of Brazilian-American director Alexandre Moratto’s accomplished, socially conscious thriller, it’ll grow smaller than they could ever have imagined. As migrant labor turns swiftly and all too plausibly into modern-day slavery, vivid, in-the-moment terror turns to more sustained, sweaty moral panic: The only way out of this prison, it seems, is to become a jailer yourself.

Moratto’s first film “Socrates,” a tender-tough, street-level study of a gay teen surviving homelessness in São Paulo, won him the Someone to Watch Award at the 2019 Independent Spirit Awards, and the more polished, pumped-up “7 Prisoners” seemingly hits the...

Exclusive: Fresh off the Venice Film Festival world premiere of his upcoming drama, 7 Prisoners, director Alexandre Moratto has been signed by WME. The Netflix title is in the Horizons Extra section here and will next screen at the Toronto International Film Festival.

A protégé of filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, Moratto first garnered attention with his award-winning debut feature Socrates, shot at a budget of $20,000 with a crew of 16-20 year olds from a Unicef-supported project providing opportunities to low-income communities in Brazil.

Socrates went on to screen at over 50 film festivals, earning Moratto two major film grants and three Independent Spirit Award nominations, including the John Cassavetes Award for best film with a budget of under $500,000 and the Someone to Watch Award, the latter of which he won.

Bahrani served as a producer on Socrates and also produces 7 Prisoners. In Deadline’s review, Anna Smith called it a...

Contrary to what its title might imply, director Alexandre Moratto’s sophomore feature “7 Prisoners” isn’t set in a correctional facility or during an armed conflict, but in the underbelly of urban Sao Paolo, Brazil. A lean, unflinching and acutely topical peek at modern-day slavery sold as an opportunity for economic advancement, this naturalistic thriller concerns a victim coerced into becoming a victimizer for survival.

Ripped from their rural hometowns with the promise of steady and well-remunerated work, a pack of young men without avenues for education head to the big city. They are neither the first nor the last, but merely part of a large operation. Mateus (Christian Malheiros), a Black 18-year-old, and three others arrive at a scrap-metal junkyard. A scruffy Rodrigo Santoro, a Hollywood regular back in his home country, plays the callous Luca, who welcomes them to their live-in positions stripping copper and sorting steel.

Samuel Theis’ Softie is a delicate portrait of the hurdles of social development for someone living in the corners of regional deprivation. Softie observes the cusp between childhood and adolescence through a personal and reflective lens, balancing a docudrama aesthetic and an emotionally charged script. Theis’ direction, like Alex Moratto’s feature Socrates, channels the poetic rusticism of French New Wave in a way that grounds coming-of-age cinema within a symphony of tactile memories.

Ten-year-old Johnny is struggling to envision where he fits in the world, and struggling far more to place himself in the town of Forbach. He lives with his turbulent mother who goes through phases of adoration and drunken fits of aggression, and a brother who spends his days with friends or his girlfriend. With his mother’s alcoholism clear, even to himself, Johnny spends his days going to school and caring for his young sister. When a new.

Philadelphia-based Breaking Glass Pictures (Bgp) and Brazil’s O2 Play, the distribution arm of O2 Filmes, which is co-owned by Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles, have inked a two-way distribution partnership.

The new pact kicks off with Bgp’s North American release of a Brazilian drama by Eliane Coster, “Half Brother” (“Meio Irmão”), a timely story of a young man who films a homophobic assault and faces death threats to dissuade him from releasing the footage. Release is slated for LGBTQ celebration, Pride Month, on June 15.

“Being a life-long fan and distributor of Brazilian Cinema, it gives me great pleasure to bring titles to U.S. audiences that may not find domestic distribution otherwise,” said Breaking Glass CEO Rich Wolff. “This partnership was years in the making, and we are thrilled to be working with O2 Play for many releases to come.”

The new pact formalizes a relationship that began in...

When do today’s top directors know that they have gotten the perfect shot? What do they wish they knew when they first started out as filmmakers about the ups and downs of directing a film that they know now? And which classic films do they revisit and love the most?

These were just some of the questions answered by four top helmers during Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts directors Q&a panel. Watch our full group chat with Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (“Cherry”), Rod Lurie (“The Outpost”), Ramin Bahrani (“The White Tiger”) and Robert Jury (“Working Man”) above. Click on each name above to view each person’s individual interview.

See Meet the Experts Directors panel: ‘The Father,’ ‘Greyhound,’ ‘I’m No Longer Here,’ ‘Sound of Metal’

“I miss those moments from my first films where I knew nothing,” admits Bahrani when asked what advice he would give his younger self.

“It’s a story about a man who wants to be free,” declares “The White Tiger” writer/director Ramin Bahrani about what ultimately underpins the narrative of his sprawling epic. “He wants to be free to reach his full potential as a human being and society is not giving him that chance. It’s been rigged against him because of where he was born and what lot in life he was born into.” We talked with Bahrani as part of Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&a event with key 2021 guild and Oscar contenders. Watch our interview above.

“The White Tiger,” which Bahrani adapted from Aravind Adiga‘s acclaimed novel of the same name, follows Balram, a poor Indian driver (Adarsh Gourav), who embarks on an epic journey to break free from the shackles of servitude to his rich masters to forge hi sown destiny and rise to...

Brazilian-American filmmaker Alexandre Moratto won the Someone To Watch prize at the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards for his feature debut Socrates, which finally reached UK cinemas and VoD this week. It was a deserving win for a lean and emotionally resonant portrait of 15-year-old Socrates' (Christian Malheiros) resilience in the face of grief, poverty and his burgeoning sexuality. Chatting to the director - who was largely raised in the US and now splits his time between there and Brazil - he admits "it's really strange " to find himself promoting the film again because of the situation with the pandemic but that it was "a nice surprise", adding, "It's like a second life for the movie."

Director Alexandre Moratto The project is quite unusual, in that Moratto worked in tandem with the Quero Institute in Brazil, a Unicef project that aims to...

A gay teen comes of age in a desperate situation in this audacious and elegant debut made on a shoestring

Brazilian-American film-maker Alexandre Moratto makes a bold feature debut with Socrates, a very personal, good-looking film resourcefully made on a micro-budget with the help of an LGBT charity in Brazil – and produced by the Iranian film-maker Ramin Bahrani.

Christian Malheiros plays Socrates, a gay teen in São Paulo who becomes homeless when his mother dies. It leaves him desperate to pay the rent, desperate to find a job and desperate to find his way in the world. And the death of his mum creates a situation in which he can’t avoid dealing with his bitter, vengeful and homophobic dad, who has the legal right to his mother’s ashes.

As expected, Christopher Nolan’s keenly awaited “Tenet” topped the U.K. and Ireland box office over the past week, collecting £5,335,654 ($7.16 million), according to final numbers from Comscore.

Warner Bros. opened the late summer tentpole wide across 611 locations midweek. For many it was the first time they had returned to cinemas since they reopened after lockdown. Following a quiet start, collections picked up.

In second place, Disney holdover “Onward” gained 29%, collecting £185,028 from 454 sites. It now has a total of £6,657,744 from the territory.

However, if previews are included, the Disney release of “X-Men” universe property “The New Mutants” ranks second, collecting $296,233 from an unspecified number of U.K. screens on the Aug. 28-30 weekend, per boxofficemojo. Disney will open the film at more that 300 screens Sept. 4.

Vertigo U.K.’s “100% Wolf” gained 31% to collect £140,050 from 456 locations in its fifth week at cinemas.

Also in its fifth week is Russell Crowe’s “Unhinged,...

The GLAAD Media Awards winners were announced on Thursday, with “Booksmart” and “Pose” taking home the top honors.

The winners were announced in a virtual ceremony hosted by comedians Fortune Feimster and Gina Yashere. The event streamed on GLAAD’s Facebook and YouTube accounts, with a taped version set to air on Logo on Monday. Performers included Chloe x Halle, Shea Diamond and Ben Platt.

Among the winners highlighted on the stream were “Old Town Road” singer Lil Nas X, who took home the award for Outstanding Music Artist; the cast and producers of “Pose” and “Schitt’s Creek,” which won the top awards for drama and comedy series, respectively; “Booksmart,” which won Outstanding Film – Wide Release; and Rachel Maddow, who received the award for Outstanding TV Journalism Segment for her one-on-one interview with Pete Buttigieg.

Also Read: Why Are There Still So Few LGBTQ Characters in Gaming? (Guest Blog)

During the ceremony,...

Chicago – Getting the right chemistry in casting a film is crucial in a drama, and the new film “Just Mercy” anchors lead actors Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx with two vital characters actors. Karan Kendrick portrays Millie McMillian, the wife of Foxx’s character, who is on death row. Tim Blake Nelson is Ralph Myers, a key witness.

“Just Mercy” is the based-on-truth story of Walter McMillian (Foxx), an African American man who is accused of a 1990s murder he did not commit. The irony of this accusation is that it takes place in Monroeville, Alabama. This is the hometown of Harper Lee, who set the scenario in her famous book about racial injustice, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” in a town like Monroeville. Enter Bryan Stevenson (Jordan), a fresh out of law school attorney looking to make a difference. With the help of Eva Ansley (Brie Larson), he takes on Walter’s case,...

GLAAD has announced the nominees for the 31st GLAAD Media Awards, honoring Lgbtq representation in film, television, news and entertainment in 2019.

Netflix received the most nominations of any network with 15 nominees, followed by HBO with eight and ABC, CBS and NBC each with four. New streaming services Apple+ and Disney+ earned their first ever nominations with Dickinson and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, respectively.

“There are more nominees for the 31st Annual GLAAD Media Awards than ever before not only because Lgbtq diversity and inclusion has progressed, but...

A sprawling and diverse amount of fictional and real life Lgbtq narratives are represented in the nominees for the 31st annual GLAAD Media Awards, announced by the legacy watchdog group on Wednesday.

A total of 176 nominations were awarded in categories from outstanding wide release movie, to newspaper article, to kids and family programming — a record number of contenders thanks to increased representation in film, streaming television, unscripted projects and news.

Variety was nominated for outstanding magazine overall coverage, in a year that marked its first ever Power of Pride issue and subsequent celebration in New York. Others in the category include Advocate, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, and Out. The awards have also reinstated a category for best Broadway production, whose nominees for 2019 include “The Inheritance,” “Slave Play,” and “Jagged Little Pill.”

“The GLAAD Awards this year not only celebrate new Lgbtq stories that educate, entertain, and affect positive cultural change, but...

Since its inception in 1994, the Indie Spirits’ “Someone to Watch” Award has singled out such rising filmmakers as Larry Fessenden, Marc Forster, Debra Eisenstadt, Lynn Shelton (with Barry Jenkins also nominated that same year), Anna Rose Holmer, and Justin Chon. Earlier this year, Brazilian first-time filmmaker Alexandre Moratto joined those rarified ranks with his micro-budgeted “Socrates.”

The film, made for just $20,000 with a group of mostly brand-new talents at the Querô Institute in Brazil, also picked up nods for the John Cassavetes Award and Best Male Lead, pitting star Christian Malheiros against such heavy-hitters as Ethan Hawke, Joaquin Phoenix, John Cho, and Daveed Diggs. Now, the film is gearing up for its North American release.

Per the film’s official synopsis: “After his mother’s sudden death, Socrates, a 15-year-old living on the margins of São Paulo’s coast, must survive on his own. As he faces isolation because of his sexuality,...

“Socrates” is the kind of downward-spiral narrative bound to sound relentlessly bleak in description. But small wonder Alex Moratto’s first feature won him the Independent Spirit “Someone to Watch” Award in January, along with various other prizes along the festival trail: He imbues this unhappy slice of slum life with an energy and compassion that transcends mere miserabilism.

With breakout performances by its two young male leads, the tale of a poor gay teen struggling to stay afloat after the death of a parent in Sao Paolo belies its short running time with a sense of full dramatic realization. It’s an engrossing portrait that Breaking Glass will give a limited U.S. theatrical release in early August. DVD/VOD launch follows later that month.

“Socrates” was made with a crew of 16- to 20-year-olds from the Quero Institute, a Unicef-supported project introducing low-income Sao Paolo youths to filmmaking.

Exclusive: New plays and musicals by Pulitzer Prize winners Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart) and Tom Kitt (Next To Normal) are among the works-in-progress set for this summer’s 35th edition of the prestigious Powerhouse Season of Vassar and New York Stage and Film.

Presented annually at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, Powerhouse has given starts to an impressive roster of work, including Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and Stephen Karam’s The Humans. Powerhouse also presented first-look productions of two finalists for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves and Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. A sampling of other current or recent Broadway and Off Broadway shows that can trace roots to the festival are Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown; the Lynn Nottage/Duncan Sheik/Susan Birkenhead musical The Secret Life of Bees; the Duncan Sheik/Steven Sater/Jessie Nelson musical Alice...

Ethan Hawke has won the Indie Spirit Award for Best Male Lead thanks to his performance in Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed.” The victory is the latest in a long line of award wins Hawke received this season, including Best Actor accolades from major critic groups such as the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Despite numerous award wins, Hawke was snubbed by the Academy and did not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

The Indie Spirit Award nominees for Best Male Lead this year included Hawke, Joaquin Phoenix (“You Were Never Really Here”), John Cho (“Searching”), Daveed Diggs (“Blindspotting”), and Christian Malheiros (“Socrates”). None of the nominees managed to break into the Oscar race for Best Actor at the Academy Awards. The Academy instead nominated Viggo Mortensen (“Green Book”), Christian Bale (“Vice”), Bradley Cooper (“A Star Is Born”), Willem Dafoe (“At Eternity...

The 34th Film Independent Spirit Awards, which airs live on the IFC cable channel at 5 p.m. Et/2 p.m. Pt this Saturday with Aubrey Plaza as host, is likely to be more indie than it has been recently. Consider that in the past decade, the Spirit Award for Best Feature has agreed with the Academy Award’s Best Picture winner five times: “The Artist” (2011), “12 Years a Slave” (2013), “Birdman” (2014), “Spotlight” (2015) and “Moonlight” (2016).

But there is no way that is happening this year. Why? None of the Spirit nominees –“Eighth Grade,”“First Reformed,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Leave No Trace” and “You Were Never Really Here” — are up for an Oscar. That is quite a shift, given that every Spirit winner for the past nine years has at least been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.

The two Spirit categories that are most likely to coincide with Oscar...

Winners of the 2019 Independent Spirit Awards, hosted by Aubrey Plaza, were revealed on Saturday, February 23, one day before the Oscars. Unlike years past, when many Best Feature nominees coincided with the Academy Award choices, the 34th edition of the Spirit Awards, which celebrates indie fare, had no cross-over in the Best Picture category.

The biggest winner of the night was “If Beale Street Could Talk,” which took home Best Feature, Best Director for Barry Jenkins and Best Supporting Female for Regina King, who is likely to repeat at the Academy Awards. And Glenn Close, whose little white dog Pippi stole the show, is pretty much a lock to repeat her win for Best Female Lead at the Oscars as well. Otherwise, the Spirits were pretty much spread out, save for two honors granted to the horror remake “Suspiria,” the Robert Altman Award along with cinematography, and two wins, Best Screenplay...

The 2019 Independent Spirit Awards will be handed out on February 23 during an afternoon ceremony on Santa Monica. These awards often preview the winners of the Academy Awards the following day. This year, we are predicting that both actress tipped to take home Oscars will win here first: leading lady Glenn Close (“The Wife”) and supporting player Regina King (“If Beale Street Could Talk”). But for the first time in a decade, none of the five films up for Best Feature here number among the nominees for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Scroll down to see the full list of Indie Spirits nominations. This roster of contenders was determined by committees that included film critics, film programmers, producers, directors, writers, cinematographers, editors, actors, past nominees and winners, and members of Film Independent’s Board of Directors. Only American-made movies with budgets under $20 million were eligible for consideration.

Winners will be revealed...

Ethan Hawke‘s awards season for “First Reformed” has been one of extremes. He dominant the critics prizes, but then he failed to register with the major precursors, only managing a Critics’ Choice Award nomination in a field of seven. But he’ll get to end the season on a high note: He’s the runaway favorite to win Best Actor at Saturday’s Independent Spirit Awards.

Hawke has a commanding 3/1-odd lead in our predictions over Joaquin Phoenix (“You Were Never Really Here”), John Cho (“Searching”), Daveed Diggs (“Blindspotting”) and Christian Malheiros (“Socrates”). None of these guys are Oscar-nominated, the first time that’s happened in this category in three years.

See Top 20 Oscar snubs: Emily Blunt (twice), Timothee Chalamet, Margot Robbie, Ethan Hawke…

One of the most honored performances of the year, Hawke’s turn as a minister experiencing a crisis of faith has earned him plaudits from practically every critics group,...

Debra Granik, who directed and wrote “Leave No Trace,” has received Film Independent’s second Bonnie Award, given to recognize a mid-career female director.

The trophy, which includes a $50,000 grant, was presented Saturday afternoon to “Leave No Trace” producer Anne Rosellini at the organization’s Spirit Awards brunch at Boa Steakhouse in West Hollywood. Granik could not attend.

Her film, which centers on a father (played by Ben Foster) and daughter living in the Oregon wilderness, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. “Leave No Trace” is up for three Spirits for best feature, director, and actress for Thomasin McKenzie.

The award is named after Bonnie Tiburzi Caputo, who joined American Airlines in 1973 at age 24, becoming the first female pilot to fly for a major U.S. airline. It was inaugurated last year with “The Rider” director Chloe Zhao as the first recipient. Karyn Kusama (“Destroyer”) and Tamara Jenkins (“Private Life”) were the other finalists.

“Leave No Trace” director Debra Granik was given a $50,000 Film Independent Spirit Awards grant designed to recognize a mid-career female director at the Spirit Awards’ nominees brunch on Saturday.

Granik won the second annual Bonnie Award, named for Bonnie Tiburzi Caputo, who joined American Airlines in 1973 and became the first female pilot to fly for a major U.S. airline. The category’s other nominees were directors Tamara Jenkins (“Private Life”) and Karyn Kusama (“Destroyer”).

Granik was one of the winners in four grant categories whose nominees were announced on Nov. 16 along with the rest of the Spirit Awards categories. But rather than waiting for the Feb. 23 Spirit Awards show to reveal the winners, the grant categories are handed out at the nominees brunch, which is held at the Boa Steakhouse in West Hollywood.

Also Read: 'If Beale Street Could Talk,' 'Leave No Trace' Nominated for Top Independent Spirit Awards

The grants,...

The Film Independent Spirit Awards announced their 2019 nominations on Friday, November 16. So who made the cut at these kudos, which celebrate the best in American independent films? Scroll down to see the complete list.

These Spirit contenders were decided by nominating committees that included film critics, film programmers, producers, directors, writers, cinematographers, editors, actors, past nominees and winners, and members of Film Independent’s Board of Directors. The winners will be chosen by all of Film Independent’s eligible members, including industry insiders and any movie fans who sign up for membership starting at $95 per year.

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Eligible films must be American productions with budgets within $20 million, which this year excluded awards contenders like “Vice,” “Mary Queen of Scots,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “The Hate U Give,” “Widows,” “Beautiful Boy” and “Black Panther,” among others. Additional titles like “Roma,” “22 July” and “The Favourite...