New York, NY (September 13, 2015) – The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the nation’s premier member organization of independent storytellers, announced today that Robert Redford and Helen Mirren will be presented with Actor and Actress Tributes at the 25^th Anniversary IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards set for Monday, November 30^th at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. Steve Golin will be awarded the Industry Tribute. They will join Todd Haynes, the previously announced Director Tribute recipient.

“We are thrilled to recognize the careers and achievements of such lauded industry veterans as Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, and Steve Golin as part of our 25^th anniversary celebrations,” said Joana Vicente, Executive Director of IFP and the Made in NY Media Center. “To celebrate these individuals who have contributed so much to the independent film community and to the entertainment world at large – and in such a landmark year for the Gothams – is truly an honor.”

This year’s Actor Tribute recipient has made an indelible mark on the independent film world and is a true artist, in addition to being a dedicated environmentalist, businessman, and political activist. A staunch supporter of uncompromised creative expression, Robert Redford’s career has spanned decades and touched and inspired countless careers along the way. Redford began on Broadway with a starring role in Sunday In New York and later Neil Simon’s Barefoot In The Park, directed by Mike Nichols. His first movie role was in War Hunt. He reprised his role in the film version of Barefoot In The Park, for which he received praise from critics and audiences. In 1969, Redford and Paul Newman teamed to star in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Directed by George Roy Hill, the film became an instant classic and firmly established Redford as one of the industry’s top leading men. He, Newman, and Hill later reunited for The Sting, which won seven Oscars^®, including Best Picture, and brought Redford a Best Actor nomination. Redford has since built a distinguished acting career, starring in dozens of classics including The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, The Natural, Out of Africa, Sneakers, and many more. Redford can currently be seen in A Walk In The Woods, a film he produced that co-stars Nick Nolte and is based on the Bill Bryson novel. In October, Redford will star as Dan Rather in Sony Pictures’ Classics’ Truth, starring Cate Blanchett and Elizabeth Moss. Redford also recently wrapped Disney’s Pete’s Dragon. Redford has starred in several films produced by his own Wildwood Enterprises, including Downhill Racer, The Candidate, The Electric Horseman and All The President’s Men, which earned seven Oscar^® nominations including Best Picture.

As a director, Redford won a Directors Guild of America Award, a Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award^® for Best Director for his feature film directorial debut Ordinary People. He went on to direct and produce The Milagro Beanfield War and A River Runs Through It, for which he received a Best Director Golden Globe nomination. Redford earned dual Oscar^® nominations for Best Picture and Best Director and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director for Quiz Show. He earned two Golden Globe nominations (Best Picture and Best Director) for The Horse Whisperer. Other films as director and producer include The Legend of Bagger Vance, Lions For Lambs, The Conspirator and The Company You Keep.

A large part of Redford’s life is the Sundance Institute, which he founded in 1981, that is dedicated to the support and development of emerging screenwriters and directors of vision, and to the national and international exhibition of new independent cinema. He is also a recipient of the Légion D’Honneur medal, France’s highest recognition, and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. Robert Redford has been a noted environmentalist and activist since the early 1970s and has served for almost 30 years as a Trustee of the Board the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The 2015 Actress Tribute recipient is one of the most internationally acclaimed performers of our time. Helen Mirren began her career in theater, in the role of Cleopatra at the National Youth Theatre. She went on to join the Royal Shakespeare Company and later the company of renowned director Peter Brook. Her film career began with Michael Powell’s Age of Consent, but her breakthrough film role came in 1980 in John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday. Over the next 10 years, she starred in a wide range of acclaimed films, including John Boorman’s Excalibur; Neil Jordan’s Irish thriller Cal, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival; Peter Weir’s The Mosquito Coast; Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; and Charles Sturridge’s Where Angels Fear to Tread. For her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in 2006 of The Queen, she received an Academy Award®, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award®, and BAFTA Award for Best Actress. Mirren earned her first Oscar® nomination for her portrayal of Queen Charlotte in Nicholas Hytner’s The Madness of King George, for which she also won Best Actress honors at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. She was later nominated for her roles in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park and Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station. Among her other film credits are Terry George’s Some Mother’s Son, on which she also served as associate producer; Calendar Girls; The Clearing; Shadowboxer; State of Play; The Tempest; and Brighton Rock. Mirren was most recently seen in The Weinstein’s Company’s Woman in Gold and Disney’s The Hundred-Foot Journey directed by Lasse Hallstrom. Mirren will next be seen on screen in Bleecker Street’s Trumbo, portraying Hedda Hopper, and next year in Bleecker Street’s Eye in the Sky.

On television, Mirren starred in the award-winning series “Prime Suspect” as Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, for which she won various accolades throughout the PBS series’ run. Most recently Mirren was honored for her performance as Queen Elizabeth I in the HBO miniseries “Elizabeth I,” winning an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe and a SAG Award®. Her long list of television credits also includes “Losing Chase,” “The Passion of Ayn Rand;” “Door to Door,” and “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone,” earning Golden Globe, Emmy and SAG Award® nominations and awards. In 2013 she won a SAG award and was nominated for an Emmy and Golden Globe award for her role in the HBO biopic “Phil Spector.”

Mirren has also worked extensively in the theatre, having recently reprised her role of Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience in London’s West End, for which she won the Olivier Award for Best Actress. She also received an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in Mourning Becomes Electra at London’s National Theatre. Most recently, Mirren was on the Broadway stage, reprising her role as Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience, a new play by Peter Morgan, directed by Stephen Daldry, for which she won a Tony Award for her performance. Helen Mirren became a Dame of the British Empire in 2003 and was honored with the BAFTA Fellowship for her outstanding career in film in 2014.

This year’s Industry Tribute recipient has become one of the most significant players in the entertainment industry over the last 30 years. Developing a reputation for cultivating artistic freedom while maintaining commercial viability, Steve Golin has worked across feature films, television, commercials, music videos, and new media. He is the Founder and Managing Partner of Anonymous Content, a leading production and management company representing some of the most talented directors, writers, and performers working today. He has over 50 film and television producing credits to his name including Babel, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Golden Globe winner for Best Picture; Being John Malkovich directed by Spike Jonze; Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; David Lynch’s Wild At Heart; Truth or Dare with Madonna; Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady; and Winter’s Bone, which was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture. Golin’s upcoming films include Spotlight, directed by Tom McCarthy; The Revenant, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu; Triple 9, directed by John Hillcoat and starring Anthony Mackie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Winslet, Woody Harrelson and Casey Affleck; and The Meddler, directed by Lorene Scafaria and starring Susan Sarandon, Rose Byrne and J.K. Simmons.

Golin is the executive producer on several television shows including the HBO anthology series “True Detective,” created by Nic Pizzolatto, which received 11 Emmy nominations and 5 wins in its first season; the hacker drama “Mr. Robot,” which was recently renewed for a second season on the USA Network; and the upcoming Cinemax series “Quarry;” “The Alienist,” which received a series order from TNT and is to be directed by Cary Fukunaga; and “Berlin Station,” a 10-part contemporary spy series to be directed by Michaël Roskam, starring Richard Jenkins and Rhys Ifans. He also produced such television series as “The L Word” and David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.”

Golin co-founded his first company, Propaganda Films, in 1986. It became the largest music video and commercial production company in the world, earning more MTV Video and Palme d’Or awards than any other company. Golin is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America.

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

For the fifth year, IFP will present the euphoria Calvin Klein Spotlight on Women Filmmakers ‘Live the Dream’ grant, a $25,000 cash award for an alumnus of IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs. This grant aims to further the careers of emerging female directors by supporting the completion, distribution and audience engagement strategies of their first feature film. The 2014 winner of this grant was director, writer, and producer Chloé Zhao, whose film Songs My Brothers Taught Me premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. In addition, euphoria Calvin Klein will present the annual Best Actress award.

The eight competitive Gotham Awards include Best Feature, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Documentary, Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor, Audience Award, and new in 2015, Best Screenplay. Recent past winners include Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), CITIZENFOUR, and Boyhood (2014) Inside Lleywn Davis, Fruitvale Station and The Act of Killing (2013); and Moonrise Kingdom, Beasts of the Southern Wild and How to Survive a Plague (2012); all of which went on to win numerous awards and garner Oscar^™ nominations.

Submissions are now being accepted in seven of the competitive categories: Best Feature, Best Documentary, Best Actor, Best Actress, Breakthrough Actor, Best Screenplay, and the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award. Applications, along with full criteria, are available at http://gotham.ifp.org. The deadline for submissions is September 17^th.

Nominees will be announced on October 22^nd and winners will be honored at a star-studded ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on November 30^th.

The Premier Sponsors of the 25th Anniversary Gotham Independent Film Awards are Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and The New York Times, and Platinum Sponsors are euphoria Calvin Klein and Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward Office of Film, Music and Entertainment.  Additionally, the awards will be promoted nationally in an eight-page special advertising section in The New York Times in November 2015.

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 new incubator space developed with the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. IFP represents a growing network of 10,000 storytellers around the world, and plays a key role in developing 350 new feature and documentary works each year. During its 35-year history, IFP has supported over 8,000 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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