By Creative Media Times

The Film Independent Spirit Awards unveiled 2018’s list of nominees, providing an early look at how the awards season is shaping up leading to the academy awards.

At the top of this list are “Eighth Grade,” “First Reformed,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Leave No Trace” and “You Were Never Really Here” all of which received best picture nominations.

“We The Animals,” from director Jeremiah Zagar and based on the novel of the same name by Justin Torres, received the most nominations with five.

This summer’s documentary hit “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” received documentary nomination along with Minding the Gap, Of Fathers and Sons, Hale County, On Her Shoulders and Shirkers.

The nominees were announced at Los Angeles’ W Hotel by Crazy Rich Asians actress Gemma Chan and Saturday Night Live alumna Molly Shannon.

The 34th Spirit Awards ceremony will be held on their usual home at the beach in Santa Monica and will air on IFC at 2 p.m. PT on Feb. 23.

Check out the list below for the full list of nominees:

Best Feature
Eighth Grade
First Reformed
If Beale Street Could Talk
Leave No Trace
You Were Never Really Here

Best Director
Debra Granik, Leave No Trace
Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk
Tamara Jenkins, Private Life
Lynne Ramsay, You Were Never Really Here
Paul Schrader, First Reformed

Best Female Lead
Glenn Close, The Wife
Toni Collette, Hereditary
Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade
Regina Hall, Support the Girls
Helena Howard, Madeline’s Madeline
Carey Mulligan, Wildlife

Best Male Lead
John Cho, Searching
Daveed Diggs, Blindspotting
Ethan Hawke, First Reformed
Christian Malheiros, Sócrates
Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really There
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Jaron Albertin’s WEIGHTLESS starring Alessandro Nivola, Julianne Nicholson, Johnny Knoxville and Eli Haley will open theatrically in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, November 9 with a national release to follow.

Alessandro Nivola, Julianne Nicholson, and Johnny Knoxville star in this haunting drama of a man, living on the margins of society, who suddenly finds himself responsible for a ten year-old son whom he hasn’t seen since infancy. An alienated loner who can barely take care of himself, he struggles to forge a relationship with this lonely, at-risk child.

Canadian director Jaron Albertin is a celebrated talent in the video and commercial world. In 2015, year he won the most prestigious award for advertising, the Palm d’Or at Cannes for his directorial work on Under Armour’sI Will What I Want campaign with Gisele Bündchen. His other numerous accolades include a Bronze Cannes Lion and additional Cannes Lion Shortlist, a prestigious D&AD Yellow Pencil (and additional Pencil nomination), Gold and Bronze Clio Awards, an AICP Award, and the PLUG Award for Music Video of the Year.

Weightless, co-written by BAFTA and Tony winning writer/playwright Enda Walsh (Once, Hunger) is his feature film directorial debut.

Weightless(official trailer)2018 from WEIGHTLESS on Vimeo.

From director Johnny Kevorkian and starring David Bradley (Dr. Who, Game of Thrones)

Take the techno-paranoia of Black Mirror, add the intergalactic body horror of John Carpenter’s THE THING, adapt them into a VHS board game, and wrap it all up in a bitingly satirical Christmas-movie package, and what do you get? Await Further Instructions from British director Johnny Kevorkian and co-starring David Bradley of Game Of Thrones, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter fame. It’ll be in theaters and on VOD October 5th from Dark Sky Films.

Film Synopsis

It’s Christmas Day and the Milgram family wake to find a mysterious black substance surrounding their house. Something monumental is clearly happening right outside their door, but what exactly – an industrial accident, a terrorist attack, nuclear war? Descending into terrified arguments, they turn on the television, desperate for any information. On screen a message glows ominously: ‘Stay Indoors and Await Further Instructions’. As the television exerts an ever more sinister grip, their paranoia escalates into bloody carnage.

A powder keg of throat-grabbing intensity and mind-bending body horror, AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS is an unmissable tour-de-force from rising star filmmaker Johnny Kevorkian and the BAFTA-nominated producer of God’s Own Country.

Leave Yourself Alone, a three-time award winning first feature debut by Nicole Eckenroad, comes to Digital HD October 9th. Eckenroad throws herself in the center of her carefully crafted narrative about a young tormented Hollywood actress followed by a pair of documentary filmmakers as she loses control of herself in method acting.

In May 2006 a 19-year-old Hollywood actress moves to Philadelphia to escape her bad reputation and restart her acting career. A pair of documentary filmmakers follows her to an undefined end as she experiments with Meisner technique, taking on the characteristics and behaviors of the characters she plays more often than her own. After losing countless roles to A-list talent, Nicole commits recklessly to a leading role in a story too close to her own and spirals into the abyss of her darkest secret.

Leave Yourself Alone is about performance and identity and depicts the lasting effect of a sexual assault on a young actress as two men film her struggle to land a break-out role. The film points a romantic gaze at a charming, innocent and naive young woman while the men behind the camera challenge the moral boundaries of keeping the camera rolling as she becomes emotionally and psychologically vulnerable. The film’s style convinces the viewer that fiction is fact and makes him consider his part as a voyeur on the victim.

“For me, this story relates very much to my experience and does for almost every
woman I know,” Eckenroad states. “Our identity and behavior are a combination of societal pressures and the inequities and aggressions acted upon us. The film is admittedly rebellious and attempts to flip the experience back onto the aggressor. It manipulates the viewer’s perception to believe they are watching a true story, and you feel guilty watching this young person self-destruct as a result of a trauma that was inflicted upon her.”

By Creative Media Times

Based on real medical science, the new indie thriller “Painless” follows a man named Henry, who has a rare condition called congenital analgesia which renders him unable to feel physical pain, and his search for normalcy.

“Pain, suffering due to bodily harm, is nature’s way of protecting us. But every once in a while, nature makes a mistake,” Henry’s voice-over says in the trailer. “If it is possible to take away the sensation of pain, then we must also be able to create it.”

“Painless” stars Joey Klein (“12 Monkeys”) and is directed by Jordan Horowitz (“Angel of Nanjing”). Also in the film are Joey Klein, Evalena Marie, Kip Gilman, and Pascal Yen-Pfister.

The new thriller is now available DVD and all major VOD platforms. See the trailer below.

Henry Long was born with a rare condition that leaves him unable to feel physical pain. Life for him is a daily struggle, never knowing when he might become seriously injured without realizing it, or worse, die from an internal injury he never knew existed. He lives in a constant state of fear and is completely alienated from those around him who cannot relate to his daily struggles.

Barricading himself in a world of science, Henry has dedicated his life to finding a cure so that he can one day know what it’s like to feel ‘normal.’ When he discovers a promising drug that he is unable to obtain on his own, he gets involved with a dangerous scientist with a dark past and his own secret agenda. Henry must decide if his need for normalcy is worth paying the ultimate price before it’s too late.

Based on a real disorder – congenital analgesia – and authentic medical science, PAINLESS looks at the dark side of life with a rare condition and the challenges both symptomatic and social that people with these conditions face.