New York, NY (October 2, 2014) – The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the nation’s premier member organization of independent storytellers, announced today that Tilda Swinton will be presented with the Actor Tribute at the 24th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards set for Monday, December 1st at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. Bennett Miller will be awarded the Director Tribute. They will join Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, the previously announced Industry Tribute recipient. 

Signaling the official kick-off for the film awards season, the Gotham Independent Film Awardsis one of the leading honors for independent film. Anchoring the evening’s seven competitive awards for Best Feature, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Documentary, Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor and the Audience Award are three tributes to film community icons, including the Industry Tribute, as well as a director and an actor/actress.

This year’s Actor Tribute recipient is known for her powerful and iconoclastic performances that have spanned the independent film scene for the past 30 years. Her outstanding performance as Minister Mason in Snowpiercer exemplifies her career-spanning transformative powers as an actor. Tilda Swinton has starred in critically acclaimed work by top independent directors, and is known for multi-film collaborations such as Derek Jarman (Caravaggio The Last of England, The Garden, War Requiem, Wittgenstein and Edward II); Lynn Hershman-Leeson (Conceiving Ada, Teknolust and Strange Culture); John Maybury (Man 2 Man and Love is the Devil); and Jim Jarmusch (Only Lovers Left Alive, Broken Flowers and The Limits of Control). In 2014, Swinton starred in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Bong Joon-Ho’s epic Snowpiercer all of which opened to rave reviews.

This year’s Director Tribute recipient has touched audiences around the world. Bennett Miller was last feted at the Gotham Awards in 2005 when he received both the Breakthrough Director award and Best Feature award for Capote, which went on to receive an Academy Award® nomination for Best Director and was the vehicle for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar®-winning performance as Truman Capote. He won the Best Director Award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival for his latest work, Foxcatcher, sure to be a highlight of this year’s film season. His film Moneyball (2011) received six Academy Award® nominations including Best Picture, four Golden Globe® nominations, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards® nominations, in addition to nominations from AFI, BAFTA, PGA and WGA. Miller earned. He began his career with the acclaimed documentary The Cruise (1998).

“We are excited to have Tilda Swinton and Bennett Miller as this year’s Actor and Director Honorees,” said Joana Vicente, Executive Director of IFP and the Made in NY Media Center. “Swinton’s broad and iconoclastic body of work permeates the indie film landscape, thrilling and challenging audiences.  Miller’s films, both narrative and documentary, have similarly made an indelible mark on the independent scene to great critical acclaim.”

The Gotham Awards provide critical early recognition to worthy independent films and their writers, directors, producers, and actors. Recent past winners include Inside Llewyn Davis, Fruitvale Stationand The Act of Killing (2013); Moonrise Kingdom, Beasts of the Southern Wild and How to Survive a Plague (2012); Beginners, The Tree of Life and Better This World (2011); Winter’s Bone and The Oath (2010); The Hurt Locker and Food, Inc. (2009), all of which went on to win numerous awards and garner Oscar™ nominations.

Last year the organization feted director Richard Linklater, actor Forest Whitaker, former NYC Mayor’s Office of Media Entertainment Commissioner Katherine Oliver and the late James Gandolfini.

Tilda Swinton

Tilda Swinton began her career with Derek Jarman in 1985, with Caravaggio followed by seven more films together, including The Last of England, The Garden, War Requiem, Wittgenstein and Edward II (for which she was named Best Actress at Venice in 1991). She gained international recognition in 1992 for her starring role in Orlando, directed by Sally Potter. She has established rewarding ongoing filmmaking relationships with Lynn Hershman-Leeson (Conceiving Ada, Teknolust and Strange Culture); John Maybury (Man 2 Man and Love is the Devil); Jim Jarmusch (Only Lovers Left Alive, Broken Flowers and The Limits of Control); and Luca Guadagnino with The Love Factory, the widely applauded I Am Love which she co-produced over the span of a decade, and the just completed A Bigger Splash which co-stars Ralph Fiennes, Matthias Schoenaerts and Dakota Johnson and will premiere in theaters sometime next year.

Swinton has also appeared in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation; David Mackenzie’s Young Adam; Mike Mills’ Thumbsucker; Francis Lawrence’s Constantine; Béla Tarr’s The Man from London, Andrew Adamson’s two blockbusters The Chronicles of Narnia tales; Erick Zonca’s Julia, which won her the Evening Standard’s Best Actress award, and Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton – for which Swinton received BAFTA and Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress in 2008. Swinton starred in Lynne Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin, which screened In Competition at Cannes 2011, a critical triumph that garnered multiple honors including Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for Best Actress. Swinton also worked with Wes Anderson on the movie Moonrise Kingdom and can be seen in his latest feature, The Grand Budapest Hotel. In 2014, Swinton starred in Bong Joon-Ho’s epic Snowpiercer and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, both of which opened to rave reviews.

Bennett Miller

Academy Award® nominated film director Bennett Miller is best known for his two narrative features, Moneyball (2011) and Capote (2005).  He won the Best Director Award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival for his latest work, Foxcatcher. Previously, Moneyball received substantial critical praise, receiving six Academy Award® nominations including Best Picture, four Golden Globe® nominations, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards® nominations, in addition to nominations from AFI, BAFTA, PGA and WGA.  Miller earned an Academy Award® nomination for Best Director for Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in his Oscar®-winning performance as Truman Capote. Miller also earned a nomination for BAFTA’s David Lean Award for Direction, a Best First Film Award from the New York Film Critics Circle and a Directors Guild of America nomination for Outstanding Feature Directorial Achievement. Miller feature debut was the documentary The Cruise (1998), a portrait of New York City tour guide Timothy “Speed” Levitch. The film garnered considerable critical praise and notable awards, including the top prize of the International Forum at the Berlin Film Festival. Miller is also an acclaimed director of television commercials, music videos, and, most recently, he directed short films for The Academy Awards and for the Democratic National Convention.

Swinton, Miller and previously announced industry tribute recipient Ted Sarandos will join a prestigious group of previous Gotham Award honorees including:  actors Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Matt Damon, Robert Duvall, Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron, Stanley Tucci, and Kate Winslet; directors David Cronenberg, Spike Lee, Mira Nair, David O. Russell, Martin Scorsese and Gus Van Sant; industry icons Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, Marcie Bloom, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Sheila Nevins, Tom Rothman, James Schamus, Jonathan Sehring, Jeff Skoll, Bob & Harvey Weinstein, and film critic Roger Ebert.

Each year IFP chooses a jury of innovators and icons in documentary and feature film directing, producing, cinematography, and acting to bestow the Gotham’s competitive awards. New this year, the Gotham Audience Award (the only non-juried category) will be open to online voting by IFP Members worldwide as a benefit of membership. 

For the fourth 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 2013 winner of this grant was Gita Pullapilly, writer, director and producer of the Tribeca Film release, Beneath the Harvest Sky. In addition, euphoria Calvin Klein will present the annual Best Actress award.

Nominees will be announced on October 23rd and winners will be honored at a star-studded ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on December 1st.

The Premier Sponsor of the 24th annual Gotham Independent Film Awards is The New York Times and the Platinum Sponsor is euphoria Calvin Klein. Additionally, the awards will be promoted nationally in an eight-page special advertising section in The New York Times in November 2014.

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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