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The Lost Daughter Scores Four Wins at the 2021 Gotham Awards, Including Best Feature
The Lost Daughter team Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, adapted from the Elena Ferrante novel, was the big winner at the 2021 Gotham Awards, presented Monday, November 29 at Cipriani Wall Street. The Netflix production, which stars Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Dagmara Domińczyk and Peter Saarsgard, was awarded Best Feature, and Gyllenhaal won Best Screenplay as well as the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director award. Colman shared the Outstanding Lead Performance Award with The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain‘s Frankie Faison.
Colman and Faison’s wasn’t the only split decision; the Gotham jury also split the Outstanding Performance in a New Series award, giving it to Ethan Hawke for The Good Lord Bird and Thuso Mbedu for The Underground Railroad. This was the first year in which the actor categories weren’t divided by gender.
Among other notable awards, Netflix’s worldwide sensation Squid Game won Breakthrough Series – Long Format, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee won Best Documentary Feature, and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car took Best International Feature. Among the evening’s memorable moments were Gotham Tributee Jane Campion recalling the producer who told her she’d never be a director, a dismissal that prompted her to make three short films that then went to Cannes, with one winning the Best Short; Nina Collins, a publishing veteran and daughter of the late Kathleen Collins, winner of a posthumous Gotham Tribute, who described the warmth of the room and saying that it made her appreciate the film business; Reservation Dogs creator Sterlin Harjo reminding the audience of the historical significance of the Wall Street location (“There were indigenous people that lived here and they fuckin’ came here and gave them beads and tricked them into giving up their land. And then they built a wall to keep them out of their land and that’s why it’s called Wall Street”); the Kristin Stewart Gotham Tribute, where Spencer director Pablo Larrain called Stewart “a miracle of cinema”; and Gyllenhaal’s declaration of goals for her second feature: “35mm and 35 days!”
(And I’d be remiss if I didn’t note one other moment, when Tessa Thompson called out the winners of The Gotham’s Focus Features and JetBlue Student Showcase, which leads to the films’ coverage in, she said, “Filmmaker Magazine, which is hot.”)
The Gotham Awards are presented by The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker‘s publisher. The complete list of nominees and awards follows.
Best Feature
“The Green Knight”
WINNER “The Lost Daughter”
“Passing”
“Pig”
“Test Pattern”
Best Documentary Feature
“Ascension”
“Faya Dayi”
WINNER “Flee”
“President”
“Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)”
Best International Feature
“Azor”
WINNER “Drive My Car”
“The Souvenir Part II”
“Titane”
“What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?”
“The Worst Person In The World”
Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award
WINNER Maggie Gyllenhaal for “The Lost Daughter”
Edson Oda for “Nine Days”
Rebecca Hall for “Passing”
Emma Seligman for “Shiva Baby”
Shatara Michelle Ford for “Test Pattern”
Best Screenplay
“The Card Counter,” Paul Schrader
“El Planeta,” Amalia Ulman
“The Green Knight,” David Lowery
WINNER “The Lost Daughter,” Maggie Gyllenhaal
“Passing,” Rebecca Hall
“Red Rocket,” Sean Baker & Chris Bergoch
Outstanding Lead Performance
WINNER Olivia Colman in “The Lost Daughter”
WINNER Frankie Faison in “The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain”
Michael Greyeyes in “Wild Indian”
Brittany S. Hall in “Test Pattern”
Oscar Isaac in “The Card Counter”
Taylour Paige in “Zola”
Joaquin Phoenix in “C’mon C’mon”
Simon Rex in “Red Rocket”
Lili Taylor in “Paper Spiders”
Tessa Thompson in “Passing”
Outstanding Supporting Performance
Reed Birney in “Mass”
Jessie Buckley in “The Lost Daughter”
Colman Domingo in “Zola”
Gaby Hoffmann in “C’mon C’mon”
WINNER Troy Kotsur in “CODA”
Marlee Matlin in “CODA”
Ruth Negga in “Passing”
Breakthrough Performer
WINNER Emilia Jones in “CODA”
Natalie Morales in “Language Lessons”
Rachel Sennott in Shiva Baby”
Suzanna Son in “Red Rocket”
Amalia Ulman in “El Planeta”
Breakthrough Series – Long Format (over 40 minutes)
“The Good Lord Bird”
“It’s A Sin”
“Small Axe”
WINNER “Squid Game”
“The Underground Railroad”
“The White Lotus”
Breakthrough Series – Short Format (under 40 minutes)
“Blindspotting”
“Hacks”
WINNER “Reservation Dogs”
“Run the World”
“We Are Lady Parts”
Breakthrough Nonfiction Series
“City So Real”
“Exterminate All the Brutes”
“How To with John Wilson”
WINNER “Philly D.A.”
“Pride”
Outstanding Performance in a New Series
Jennifer Coolidge in “The White Lotus”
Michael Greyeyes in “Rutherford Falls”
WINNER Ethan Hawke in “The Good Lord Bird”
Devery Jacobs in “Reservation Dogs”
Lee Jung-jae in “Squid Game”
WINNER Thuso Mbedu in “The Underground Railroad”
Jean Smart in “Hacks”
Omar Sy in “Lupin”
Anya Taylor-Joy in “The Queen’s Gambit”
Anjana Vasan in “We Are Lady Parts”
