Adolpho Veloso ABC AIP has won the Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography.
The Brazilian’s work on Train Dreams saw him take home the prize – with the film itself also winning Best Feature, while its writer-director Clint Bentley took Best Director.
Accepting his award, Veloso said: “Thanks to everybody, obviously, who did the movie. It’s so hard to do what we do. We often feel in a big crisis and not really happy with what we’re doing and thinking we could have done better.
“So shout-out to everybody who did the movie. I feel like this award goes to the whole crew. It’s not easy to shoot the movie the way we shot, with natural light and practical lighting that involves all possible departments. I couldn’t have done it without everybody… Thank you very much.”
Among the other films and artists honoured, Rose Byrne won Best Lead Performance for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You; Sorry, Baby won Best Supporting Performance for Naomi Ackie and Best Screenplay for Eva Victor; Lurker won Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay for Alex Russell; Kayo Martin won Best Breakthrough Performance for The Plague; The Secret Agent won Best International Film; The Perfect Neighbor won Best Documentary; and Sofía Subercaseaux won Best Editing for The Testament of Ann Lee.
In the television categories, this year’s major winner was Adolescence, which won four awards, the most for any television show since the Spirit Awards began honouring the medium in 2021.
Those awards included Best New Scripted Series, Best Lead Performance in a New Scripted Series for Stephen Graham, Best Supporting Performance in a New Scripted Series for Erin Doherty, and Best Breakthrough Performance in a New Scripted Series for Owen Cooper.
The other television winners included Pee-wee as Himself, which won Best New Non-Scripted or Documentary Series, and Chief of War, which won Best Ensemble Cast in a New Scripted Series.
The 18th annual Robert Altman Award, which was created in 2008 in honour of legendary film director Robert Altman, who was known for creating extraordinary ensemble casts, was awarded to The Long Walk director Francis Lawrence, alongside casting director Rich Delia, as well as ensemble cast members Judy Greer, Mark Hamill, Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Tut Nyuot, Joshua Odjick, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang and Garrett Wareing.
Esta Isla (This Island) was honoured with the John Cassavetes Award, given to the best feature made for under $1,000,000.
Also celebrated were the previously announced honours including Tatti Ribeiro of Valentina with the Someone to Watch Award, recognising a filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition; Rajee Samarasinghe of Your Touch Makes Others Invisible with the Truer Than Fiction Award, presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has yet to receive significant recognition; and Tony Yang with the Producers Award, honouring emerging producers who demonstrate the creativity, tenacity and vision required to produce quality independent films with limited resources.
The full list of winners is available on the Film Independent website.
