New York, NY (September 7, 2016) – The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the nation’s premier member organization of independent storytellers, announced today that Ethan Hawke and Amy Adams will be presented with Actor and Actress Tributes, and Oliver Stone will receive the Director Tribute at the 2016 IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards set for Monday, November 28^th at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.

Signaling the official kick-off for the film awards season, the Gotham Awards is one of the leading honors for independent film and provides critical early recognition to worthy independent films and their writers, directors, producers, and actors. Recent winners include Spotlight (2015), The Look of Silence (2015); Birdman, Boyhood, and CITIZENFOUR (2014); Inside Llewyn Davis and The Act of Killing (2013); Beasts of the Southern Wild, Moonrise Kingdom, and How to Survive a Plague (2012); and Beginners, The Tree of Life, and Better This World (2011), all of which went on to numerous awards and Oscar® nominations. Anchoring the evening’s competitive awards are tributes to film community icons, including the Actor, Actress, and Director Tributes, as well as an Industry Tribute to be announced.

“We are honored to have Amy Adams, Ethan Hawke, and Oliver Stone as our Actress, Actor, and Director Tribute honorees at this year’s Gotham Awards,” said Joana Vicente, Executive Director of IFP and the Made in NY Media Center. “Each with a remarkable body of work that continues to challenge, thrill, and inspire audiences, we are proud to celebrate their numerous artistic achievements and honor their contributions to the landscape of cinema with these Tributes.”

This year’s Actress Tribute honoree, Amy Adams, has built an impressive body of work, challenging herself with each new role, and touching audiences worldwide with her masterful performances.

Adams was most recently seen in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, the sequel to the highly successful Man of Steel, in which she reprised her role of Lois Lane.

Up next, she will star in two of the most highly anticipated films of the fall season: Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, opposite Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, which will be released by Paramount Pictures on November 11, 2016, and Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, to be released by Focus Features on November 18, 2016. Her roles in each have garnered a tremendous response from critics, with Deadline saying: “Her performance in Arrival is spellbinding.”

Adams will next go into production on HBO’s high-profile drama series Sharp Objects, based on Gillian Flynn’s New York Times best-selling book in which she will star and executive produce.

Additional film credits include starring in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, an biographical drama, in which Adams plays artist Margaret Keane. Adams won a Golden Globe® for Best Actress and earned a BAFTA nomination for the performance.

Adams starred in David O. Russell’s American Hustle opposite Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper, for which she won a Golden Globe® Award, a Critics’ Choice Award, and a SAG Award. This was her second teaming with the director, coming after The Fighter, which garnered her multiple award nominations, including her third Oscar® nomination in five years.

Adams’ role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, garnered her a Golden Globe® and BAFTA nomination in addition to her fourth Academy Award® nomination.

In summer of 2012, Adams returned to the stage in Into the Woods as part of Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte.

Adams also starred in Nora Ephron’s Julie and Julia, reuniting with Meryl Streep, after having previously starred opposite Streep in the Oscar®^–nominated film Doubt, which earned Adams her second Academy Award® nomination. It was Adams’ role in Phil Morrison’s Junebug in 2005 for which she earned her first Academy Award® and SAG nominations, as well as several awards, including the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor.

Additional credits include Trouble with the Curve, On The Road, Disney’s The Muppets and Enchanted, Sunshine Cleaning, Charlie Wilson’s War, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and Catch Me If You Can.

This year’s Actor Tribute honoree, Ethan Hawke, is a distinguished artist, recognized the world over as a talented and versatile performer, as well as director, novelist, and screenwriter of several unforgettable films. With a career spanning nearly thirty years and many major accolades including multiple Oscar® and Tony® nominations, Hawke has established himself as a true and multi-faceted talent.

He was most recently seen portraying the late Chet Baker in Robert Budreau’s Born to Be Blue from IFC Films, a performance that, according to Rolling Stone, contained “everything that makes Ethan Hawke an extraordinary actor – his energy, his empathy, his fearlessness, [and] vanity-free eagerness to explore the deeper recesses of a character,” and Variety called “one of the best performances of his career.”

Other films released in 2016 include The Phenom, Sony Pictures Classics’ Maggie’s Plan, The Magnificent Seven, directed by Antoine Fuqua and soon to be released by Sony Pictures on September 23, 2016, Ti West’s In A Valley of Violence, and Maudie, which will make its debut at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals this September.

The 2014 film Boyhood, for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, marked his 8^th collaboration with director Richard Linklater. They have worked together on Fast Food Nation, Waking Life, The Newton Boys, Tape and the beloved trilogy of films which he starred in and co-wrote with Julie Delpy – Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight.

In 2002, Hawke received his first Academy Award® nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Antoine Fuqua’s Academy Award®-winning film Training Day opposite Denzel Washington.

Additional credits include: Dead Poets Society, Dad, Reality Bites, Alive, Great Expectations, Hamlet, Gattaca, Brooklyn’s Finest, The Purge, and Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead.

Ethan Hawke’s Gotham Awards history includes nominations for Breakthrough Director in 2002 for Chelsea Walls, a Best Actor nomination in 2014 for Boyhood, and a Gotham Award win in 2007 as part of the ensemble cast of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.

This year’s Director Tribute recipient, Oliver Stone, is a true visionary whose prolific career as director, writer, and producer has given us some of the most influential, iconic, and often controversial films of the last few decades.

His first brush with this controversy came as a screenwriter, with the uproar surrounding Midnight Express, for which he took home his first Academy Award®, and again shortly after with Scarface. Stone continued to challenge audiences over the years with films that were at deep odds with conventional myth – films such as Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Natural Born Killers, and Nixon – all of which were nominated for several major awards and earned him two more Academy Awards®, among many other honors.

Stone’s films have often reached audiences across the world and made a significant cultural impact. Some of these films include Salvador, Wall Street, World Trade Center, The Doors, Any Given Sunday, W., Savages, documentaries Comandante, Looking for Fidel, Castro in Winter, South of the Border, and Persona Non Grata, and his 12-hour-long television series The Untold History of the United States. He has also produced or co-produced a dozen films including The People vs. Larry Flynt, The Joy Luck Club, and Reversal of Fortune.

This year will see the release of his highly anticipated film Snowden by Open Road Films on September 16, 2016, which takes on the untold story of Edward Snowden, the man who shocked America when he exposed illegal surveillance activities by the NSA in 2013.

Ethan Hawke, Amy Adams, and Oliver Stone will join a prestigious group of previous honorees including: Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, Todd Haynes, Bennett Miller, Tilda Swinton, Ted Sarandos, Jeff Skoll, James Schamus, Bob & Harvey Weinstein, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Sheila Nevins, Jonathan Sehring, Roger Ebert, Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Charlize Theron, Stanley Tucci, Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, David O. Russell, David Cronenberg, Mira Nair, Gus Van Sant, and many more.

Always seeking to further their mission of supporting independent storytellers in a changing media landscape, last year IFP added two new awards for “Breakthrough Series” to honor outstanding debut series on television and digital media platforms. Nominees for the inaugural Breakthrough Series (Long Form) included Jane the Virgin (The CW), Transparent (Amazon), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix), UnREAL (A&E Studios for Lifetime), and the winner, Mr. Robot, the USA Network series created by Sam Esmail that has gone on to receive numerous additional nominations and awards over the past year including the Best Television Series award at the 2016 Golden Globes® and six 2016 Primetime Emmy® nominations. The first Breakthrough Series (Short Form) award was awarded to the web series Shugs & Fats, whose creators Nadia P. Manzoor and Radhika Vaz have since been approached by producers about expanding it into a longer form continuing series.

The ten competitive Gotham Awards for 2016 include Best Feature, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Documentary, Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor, Audience Award, Best Screenplay, Breakthrough Series – Short Form, and Breakthrough Series – Long Form. Submissions are now being accepted in eight of these competitive categories. Online applications, along with full criteria, are available at http://gotham.ifp.org. The deadline for submissions is September 15^th.

The Premier Sponsor of the 2016 Gotham Awards is The New York Times, and the Platinum Sponsors are euphoria Calvin Klein and Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Office of Film, Music and Entertainment.

Nominees will be announced on October 20^th and winners will be honored at the star-studded ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on November 28^th. The event will be streamed live on our website. To purchase tables or tickets to attend, please contact Steven Pfeiffer by email at [email protected], or by phone at (212) 465-8200 Ext. 219.

About IFP

The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) champions the future of storytelling by connecting artists with essential resources at all stages of development and distribution. The organization fosters a vibrant and sustainable independent storytelling community through its year-round programs, which include Independent Film Week, Filmmaker Magazine, the Gotham Independent Film Awards and the Made in NY Media Center by IFP, a tech and media incubator space developed with the New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.

IFP represents a growing network of storytellers around the world, and plays a key role in developing 350 new feature and documentary works each year. During its 37-year history, IFP has supported over 10,000+ projects and offered resources to more than 20,000+ filmmakers, including Debra Granik, Miranda July, Michael Moore, Dee Rees, and Benh Zeitlin. More info at www.ifp.org.

About the Gotham Independent Film Awards by IFP

The Gotham Independent Film Awards by IFP, selected by distinguished juries and presented in New York City, the home of independent film, are the first honors of the film awards season. This public showcase honors the filmmaking community, expands the audience for independent films, and supports the work that IFP does behind the scenes throughout the year to bring such films to fruition.

For information on attending: http://gotham.ifp.org

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