‘Past Lives’ wins Spirit Awards

The film ‘Past Lives’ (‘Past Lives’, in Spanish) and its director, South Korean Celine Song, were recognized this Sunday at the 39th Spirit Awards, the most prestigious in the world’s independent cinema, thanks to wins in the best film and best director categories.

Some wins that have him gaining momentum going into the meet with Oscar, planned for next March 10 and in which to date he has not had great opportunities in the sections for which he was nominated: best film and best original screenplay.

‘Past Lives’, the A24 studio that already triumphed last year with “Everything everywhere and at once”, In the category of the best feature film, it met with ‘May December’, ‘American Fiction’, ‘All of Us Strangers’, ‘We Grown Now’ and ‘Passages’.

“There is an Eastern concept in our film called ‘inyeon’ (…) It’s about how the very fact that we are in the same space and time in this life with other people means that we actually knew each other from many previous lives” , The song was presented when receiving the award at the gala dinner, which is held as every year in Santa Monica.

And she added: “I think that’s how I felt doing this film (…) It’s a feeling I have where I feel a lot less alone because I know everyone here feels the same way… so thank you very much for everything.”

This film follows the meeting of two childhood friends who rreflect about their relationship and their own lives.

Dubbed the “Oscars of Indie”,The Spirit Awards only recognize films whose budget does not exceed 30 million dollars, which is a rather low figure by the standards of Hollywood studios.

In this edition of Spirit, ‘The Holdovers’ took home the most awards thanks to Da’Vine’s success Joy Randolph for Best Supporting Actor, Dominic Sessa for Best New Actor and Eigil Bryldo as Director of Photography.

For his part, Jeffrey Wright won Best Actor for ‘American Fiction’, a production that also won Best Screenplay for the work of Cord Jefferson, who also directed.

While Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, from ‘May December’were awarded the prize for the best first screenplay.

The award for the best international film went to “Anatomy of a Fall” (‘Anatomy of the Fall’), the work of the French Justine Triet.

The last edition of these awards already had neutral acting categories for the first time, until then divided by gender.

The event, which could be followed via IMDb and Film Independent’s official YouTube channel, also saw recognition in the television categories for ‘The Last of Us’, for the performances of Nick Offerman and Keivonne Montreal Woodard, and for ‘Beef’, which was awarded for the best screenplay for a new series, and Alice Wong for the best lead role in a production of this type.