'A Real Pain,' 'Shōgun' and 'No Other Land' win Independent Spirit Awards

The documentary “No Other Land,” the FX series “Shōgun” and Jesse Eisenberg's film “A Real Pain” won several big awards at the 40th Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday.

The annual ceremony held in a beachside tent in Santa Monica, California, is the shaggier, more irreverent sister to the Academy Awards, celebrating the best in independent film and television. This year, with “Anora” among its top nominees, it could serve as a preview for Oscar night next Sunday. Kieran Culkin, considered an Oscar favorite, won the supporting performance award for “A Real Pain.”

Culkin was not there to accept — he also missed his BAFTA win last weekend to tend to a family member — but other Oscar nominees like Mikey Madison, Demi Moore, Sebastian Stan and Colman Domingo were in attendance.

Host Aidy Bryant called it “Hollywood’s third or fourth biggest night,” returning to host the proceedings for the second year.

“It has been a great year for film and a bad year for human life,” Bryant said.

The “Saturday Night Live” alum kicked off the event ribbing some of the nominees, like Emma Stone.

“Emma was a producer on four nominated projects tonight,” Bryant said. “But even more importantly, her hair is short now.”

Stone also featured prominently in Eisenberg’s speech, when he picked up the best screenplay prize for “A Real Pain.” Since they met on the set of “Zombieland” in 2009, he said, she’s been supportive of his writing despite being “the most famous person I know” and produced both of his films.

“I think of her not as my producer, but as a fairy godmother, like I’m riding the coattails for her goodwill,” Eisenberg said.

The camera cut to Stone, teary and moved, in the audience. She and her husband Dave McCary’s production company Fruit Tree also produced Julio Torres' “Problemista” and “Fantasmas” and Jane Schoenbrun's “I Saw the TV Glow.”

The documentary prize went to “No Other Land,” the lauded film by a Palestinian-Israeli collective about the destruction of a village in the West Bank which doesn’t have distribution. It’s also a strong Oscar contender in a competitive category. The filmmakers were not in attendance to accept the award.

Sean Wang accepted best first feature and best first screenplay prizes for “Dìdi.” He said it was special to be sharing the stage with one of his stars, Joan Chen, who was also nominated for the same award 25 years ago for “Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl.”

The Netflix phenomenon “Baby Reindeer” also picked up several prizes, for actors Jessica Gunning and Nava Mau.

Mau, who is trans, spoke about the importance of actors sticking together “as we move into this next chapter.”

“We don’t know what is going to happen, but we do know our power,” Mau said. “We are the people and our labor is everything.”

“Shōgun” won best new scripted series and “My Old Ass” star Maisy Stella took the breakthrough performance award.

The generally lighthearted show also took a moment to acknowledge the impact of the wildfires on Los Angeles. Bryant made a plea to anyone watching the show, in the audience or on the YouTube livestream, to help rebuild L.A. She pointed to a QR code that appeared on the livestream to make donations to the Film Independent Emergency Filmmaker Relief Fund, providing grants to alumni impacted by the wildfires.

Oscar front-runner “Anora” is one of the most nominated films of the night, as is Schoenbrun’s psychological horror “I Saw the TV Glow.” Both got six nominations, including best feature and best director.

Also nominated for best feature film are RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s “Nickel Boys,” Greg Kwedar’s incarceration drama “Sing Sing” and Coralie Fargeat’s body horror “The Substance.”

Madison, who surprisingly triumphed over Moore last weekend at the BAFTAs, is among the lead actor nominees. Her competition includes Moore, for “The Substance,” Stan, for playing a young Donald Trump in “The Apprentice” and Domingo for his turn as an incarcerated man in “Sing Sing.”

Acting categories for the Spirit Awards are gender neutral and include 10 spots each.

The winners of the show sometimes overlap significantly with the Oscars, as in the “Everything Everywhere All At Once” year, and sometimes hardly at all. Last year’s awards season champion “Oppenheimer” was too expensive to qualify, and the top Spirit Awards winners were “Past Lives” and “American Fiction.”

The awards limit eligibility to productions with budgets of $30 million or less, meaning more expensive productions like “Wicked” and “Dune: Part Two” were not in the running.