For critics awards, Asian directors hogged limelight
LOS ANGELES: Asian directors had hogged the limelight during the 44th Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards.
“This year’s crop of winners is the most diverse in LAFCA’s history,” the organisation’s president Claudia Puig said during her opening remarks.
There were no surprise winners, but it was nevertheless striking to see the podium at this event occupied, for much of a three-plus-hour gathering, by filmmakers of Asian descent and/or filmmakers gushing about making movies with Netflix, which is often portrayed as the Big Bad Wolf of the film industry.
Addressing a packed ballroom, Puig, the president of the 60critic organisation (13 members are female), noted early on that this year’s group of winners was the most diverse in the organisation’s history, with 14 of the 18 winners women and/or people of colour.
“Film transcends borders,” she emphasised — one of many speakers’ thinly veiled references to the ongoing government shutdown over President Donald Trump’s insistence on getting funding for a border wall.
Asian domination was evident, with accolades for Burning’s Lee Chang-dong and Shoplifter’s Hirozaku Kore-eda (who tied for best foreign language film), Minding the Gap’s Bing Liu (best film editing, shared with Joshua Altman), The Rider’s Chloe Zhao (New Generation Award, in absentia), Shirkers’ Sandi Tan (best documentary/nonfiction film) and Hayao Miyazaki (Career Achievement Award, in absentia). As for non-directors, Burning’s Steven Yeun was awarded best supporting actor honours.
Kore-eda told the crowd, “Films can break down walls.”
Female helmers were wellrepresented, too. Leave No Trace’s Debra Granik collected the best director prize — a shot across the bow of other groups who have not even nominated women for that honour this season — as her film’s stars Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Dale Dickey looked on.
And also honoured were Can You Ever Forgive Me’s writer and original director Nicole Holofcenter (best original screenplay) and Tan.
Netflix, meanwhile, received gushing praise from the teams behind Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma (which was awarded best picture and cinematography honours), Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind (Special Citation) and Tan, creating the unmistakable feeling that ‘the invaders’ are beginning to be embraced by the establishment.
Should Roma feel confident that the top LAFCA honour will catapult it to the same pedestal at the Oscars? It’s hard to say.
In 10 of the 43 previous years in which the LAFCA has presented a best picture award, its winner went on to win the best picture Oscar — but only four times in the last 25 years.
Films can break down walls. Hirozaku Kore-eda, award-winning director