Winter’s Bone gathered yet more critical moss at last night’s Gotham Awards, which awarded the sobering noir about a 17-year-old girl forced to go looking for her meth-head father the Best Feature Film prize. In years past, the Gotham Awards have helped bolster the profiles of independent films and increase their chances of getting Academy attention—notably The Hurt Locker, which won best feature last year before going on to win Best Picture—which should certainly help the already top-rated Winter’s Bone come Oscar time. Elsewhere, shortlisted Best Documentary nominee Waiting For ‘Superman’ took home Gotham’s newly inaugurated Genius Audience Award, while The Oath (about Osama Bin Laden’s former bodyguard turned taxi driver in Yemen) won best documentary.
Among the more unexpected wins: Winter’s Bone’s much-lauded lead Jennifer Lawrence lost the Breakthrough Performance award to Ronald Bronstein for Daddy Longlegs, while buzzed-about Tiny Furniture director Lena Dunham lost Breakthrough Director to Kevin Asch for his Jesse Eisenberg-starring drug-dealing Orthodox Jew film Holy Rollers. The Gotham Awards: They simply can’t get enough drugs. (Indiewire has a minute-by-minute recap of the ceremony here.)