Gotham Awards - 2006 Winners
November 30th, 2006 by Andre Soares
The socially-conscious psychological drama Half Nelson, one of those rare low-budget American films that actually have something to say and that manage to convey their message without condescending to their audience, nabbed three Gotham Awards at a Nov. 29 ceremony held in New York City.
The story of a liberal-minded public school teacher (Ryan Gosling) who tries to impart wisdom and power to his inner-city students while himself trying to escape — through drugs — from his own powerlessness to change the world around him, Half Nelson won awards for Best Film (beating critics’ darling The Departed), Breakthrough Director (Ryan Fleck), and Breakthrough Performer (Shareeka Epps, who shared the award with Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi.)
James Longley’s well-received Iraq in Fragments was chosen Best Documentary. A rarity among American documentaries on the war in Iraq, which almost invariably focus on American military personnel, Iraq in Fragments portrays the Iraq disaster as seen through the eyes of ordinary Iraqis.
Steve Barron’s Choking Man, the tale of a pathologically shy Ecuadorian man (Octavio Gómez) working as a dishwasher in Queens, won the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Award, given to American feature films without distribution.
The Babel cast, including nationals from Mexico, Australia, the United States, Japan, and Morocco, was voted the Best Ensemble award.
Additionally, assorted tributes were paid to the likes of Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Tim Robbins, and Babel director Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Referring to the controversy surrounding the inclusion of two big-studio productions — Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (Warner Bros.) and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (Sony Pictures) — among the nominees for the Best Film Gotham Award, host David Cross joked about Scorsese’s crime drama, "How that ever got greenlit I have no idea."
The Gotham Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards are the two, for lack of a better word, awards (mostly) dedicated to independent American filmmaking.
Full list of Gotham Awards winners and nominees
THE CONVERSATION (1974): DVD Review
Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival Awards - 2006
Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival 2006 Winners
Independent Spirit 2006 Nominees
Stockholm Film Festival 2006 Winners
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