Elle, Moonlight and Silence Dominate 2017 ICS Award Nominations
Honoring films released in the USA in 2016.
Intensity was the unifying theme of this year’s ICS Award nominees, as all five top films gripped us in their passion, beauty and cruelty. Elle, Paul Verhoeven’s story of a woman who takes control by stalking and manipulating her rapist, garnered eight nominations, including an astonishing, hatchet-sharp lead performance by French legend Isabelle Huppert.
Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, also with eight nods, makes tender poetry out of the bullying and gay-bashing of a black child, while speaking volumes to a wider audience about the heart’s rough journey into adulthood and all the vulnerability that remains. Silence, Martin Scorsese’s late-breaking passion project, received only one Oscar nomination, for its lush cinematography. But ICS was having none of that: this violent, cerebral take on Christian missionaries, tortured and doubt-filled in their quest to spread an unwelcome belief system into 17th-century Japan, came on strong to capture eight ICS nods as well.
Close behind in this year’s logjam, Julieta refracts a trio of Alice Munro short stories about abandonment, grief and fate through the vibrant lens of Pedro Almodóvar, Spain’s preeminent auteur. The resulting artistry of feeling and image earned it seven ICS mentions spread across multiple categories. Finally, poised to prank them all with six major nominations, Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann is a saucy father-daughter romp that flawlessly turns into a nuanced, deeply felt examination of life in modern global culture, asking how the human soul can continue to survive.
In keeping with ICS tradition, the Unreleased Films list features 15 underseen films that our members were lucky enough to catch at festivals on five continents, and for which they voted passionately, but which failed to receive theatrical distribution in the USA in 2016.
Winners of the 14th ICS Awards will be announced on February 19, 2017.
PICTURE
• Cemetery of Splendor
• Certain Women
• Elle
• Jackie
• Julieta
• Manchester by the Sea
• Moonlight
• Silence
• Things to Come
• Toni Erdmann
DIRECTOR
• Maren Ade – Toni Erdmann
• Pedro Almodóvar – Julieta
• Barry Jenkins – Moonlight
• Martin Scorsese – Silence
• Paul Verhoeven – Elle
• Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Cemetery of Splendor
FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
• Aquarius
• Being 17
• Cemetery of Splendor
• Cosmos
• Elle
• Embrace of the Serpent
• The Handmaiden
• Julieta
• Mountains May Depart
• Things to Come
• Toni Erdmann
ACTOR
• Casey Affleck – Manchester by the Sea
• Adam Driver – Paterson
• Colin Farrell – The Lobster
• Andrew Garfield – Silence
• Jae-yeong Jeong – Right Now, Wrong Then
• Peter Simonischek – Toni Erdmann
ACTRESS
• Sonia Braga – Aquarius
• Sandra Hüller – Toni Erdmann
• Isabelle Huppert – Elle
• Natalie Portman – Jackie
• Zhao Tao – Mountains May Depart
SUPPORTING ACTOR
• Mahershala Ali – Moonlight
• Tom Bennett – Love & Friendship
• Alden Ehrenreich – Hail, Caesar!
• André Holland – Moonlight
• Issei Ogata – Silence
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
• Viola Davis – Fences
• Lily Gladstone – Certain Women
• Sandrine Kiberlain – Being 17
• Nicole Kidman – Lion
• Masami Nagasawa – Our Little Sister
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
• Cemetery of Splendor – Apichatpong Weerasethakul
• The Lobster – Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
• Manchester by the Sea – Kenneth Lonergan
• Things to Come – Mia Hansen-Løve
• Toni Erdmann – Maren Ade
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
• Certain Women – Kelly Reichardt
• Elle – David Birke
• Julieta – Pedro Almodóvar
• Love & Friendship – Whit Stillman
• Moonlight – Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney
• Silence – Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese
CINEMATOGRAPHY
• Embrace of the Serpent – David Gallego
• Evolution – Manuel Dacosse
• Jackie – Stéphane Fontaine
• Moonlight – James Laxton
• Silence – Rodrigo Prieto
EDITING
• Arrival – Joe Walker
• Elle – Job ter Burg
• Jackie – Sebastián Sepúlveda
• Moonlight – Joi McMillon, Nat Sanders
• Silence – Thelma Schoonmaker
PRODUCTION DESIGN
• Hail, Caesar! – Jess Gonchor
• The Handmaiden – Seong-hie Ryu
• Julieta – Antxón Gómez
• La La Land – David Wasco
• Silence – Dante Ferretti
SCORE
• Elle – Anne Dudley
• Jackie – Mica Levi
• Julieta – Alberto Iglesias
• The Neon Demon – Cliff Martinez
• The Red Turtle – Laurent Perez Del Mar
ENSEMBLE
• Certain Women
• Elle
• Julieta
• The Lobster
• Moonlight
ANIMATED FILM
• Kubo and the Two Strings
• My Life as a Zucchini
• The Red Turtle
• Your Name
• Zootopia
DOCUMENTARY
• Cameraperson
• Francofonia
• Fuocoammare
• No Home Movie
• O.J.: Made in America
BEST PICTURE NOT RELEASED IN 2016
• Brothers of the Night
• The Death of Louis XIV
• Despite the Night
• Happy Times Will Come Soon
• The Lost City of Z
• Nocturama
• The Ornithologist
• Personal Shopper
• A Quiet Passion
• Sieranevada
• Slack Bay
• The Son of Joseph
• Staying Vertical
• Sweet Dreams
• Yourself and Yours