Cowboys, Asia and Materna come out on top at Tribeca Film Festival 2020

Due to the current global situation, New York’s 19^th annual Tribeca Film Festival – which was originally scheduled to take place between the 15-26^th April – has been postponed. However, that hasn’t stopped a select portion of the festival’s programme from being released online. Out of this hand-picked catalogue of cinema from across the globe, the panels of jurors have managed to select their festival winners.

“We are fortunate that technology allowed or our jury to come together this year to honour our filmmakers,” states the festival’s co-founder and CEO Jane Rosenthal. “Despite not being able to be together physically, we were still able to support our artists, which has always been at the heart of the Festival.”

“While we are not yet able to celebrate these incredible films at their premieres,” adds festival director Cara Cusumano, “we are so proud to celebrate them in partnership with our generous jurors through our 2020 Tribeca Awards. The jury chose to recognise a daring, innovative, entertaining, diverse group of films and filmmakers, and the Festival is pleased to honour all of them with our first-ever virtual awards ceremony.”

With awards in numerous categories spanning narrative, documentary and short films from both American and international filmmakers, it was Cowboys, Asia, and Materna that came out on top in this year’s line-up.

The full list of winners are as follows:

US Narrative Competition

Founders Award For Best Narrative Feature – The Half of It (dir. Alice Wu). The jurors note, “The film is so charming, it’s so energetic, it’s so fun, it’s so well-paced, it’s directed with such a sure hand, it’s a really confident film and the characters are really well drawn and the actors were fantastic.”

Art Award – Julian Schnabel’s Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, 2007. Oil on map.

Best Actress in a US Narrative Feature Film – Assol Abullina for Materna (dir. David Gutnik).

Best Actor in a US Narrative Feature Film – Steve Zahn for Cowboys (dir. Anna Kerrigan).

Best Cinematography in a US Narrative Feature Film – Greta Zuzzula, Chananun Chotrungro, and Kelly Jaffrey for Materna.

Best Screenplay in a US Narrative Feature Film – Anna Kerrigan for Cowboys.

International Narrative Competition

Best international Narrative Feature – The Hater (Poland, dir. An Komasa). “Incredibly relevant for today; we were really impressed by the way it portrayed a character that is not immediately empathetic but really got us into the journey and the story”, said the jurors.

Art Award – Helen Maren’s January Golden Rock, 2020. Watercolour on paper.

Special Jury Mention – Ainu Mosir (Japan, dir. Takeshi Fukunaga).

Best Actor in an International Narrative Feature Film – Noe Hernandez, Kokoloko (Mexico, dir. Gerardo Naranjo).

Best Actress in an International Narrative Feature Film – Shira Haas, Asia (Israel, dir. Ruthy Pribar)

Best Cinematography in an International Narrative Feature Film – Daniella Nowitz for Asia.

Best Screenplay in an International Narrative Feature Film – Prashant Nair for Tryst With Destiny (India, France, dir. Preshant Nair).

Documentary Competition

Best Documentary Feature – Socks on Fire (dir. Bo McGuire). The jurors write, “The film used new techniques woven into documentary filmmaking and narrative storytelling.”

Art Award – Sterling Ruby’s DRFTRS, 2020. Collage, paint and glue on paper.

Special Jury Mention – Wonderboy (dir. Anissa Bonnefont).

Best Cinematography in a Documentary Film – Alejandro Mejia for 499 (dir. Rodrigo Reyes).

Best Editing in a Documentary Film – Amy Foote for Father Soldier Son (dir. Catrin Eimhorn and Leslye Davis).

Other Awards

Best New Narrative Director – Gaspar Antillo for Nobody Knows I’m Here.

Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award – Jessica Earnshaw for Jacinta.

The Nora Ephron Award – Asia.

Art Award – Pat Steir’s Untitled, 2008. Oil, pencil, ink, and acrylic on paper.

Special Jury Mention – My Wonderful Wanda (dir. Bettina Oberli).

Short Film Competition

Best Narrative Short – No More Wings (dir. Abraham Adeyemi).

Art Award: Robert Nava: Medusa’s Walk, 2020. Acrylic, oil stick, crayon, and pencil on paper.

Special Jury Mention: Soup (dir. Inga Sukhorukova).

Best Animated Short – Friends (dir. Glorian Groig).

Best Documentary Short – My Father The Mover (dir. Julia Jansch).

Student Visionary Award – Cru-Raw (dir. David Oesch).

Art Award: Vahakn Arslanian’s Light o Airbus, 2009. Graphite on paper in artist’s frame.

Special Jury mention: The Last Ferry to Grass Island (dir. Linhan Zhang).

Tribeca X Awards

Best Short – Pay Day (dir. Morgan Cooper) for Synchrony Bank.

Best Series – Girls Room (dir. Tiffany Johnson, writer. Lena Waithe) for Dove.

Best Feature – U Shoot Videos? (dir. Morgan Cooper) for Adorama.

Andrew Murray

Read more from our Tribeca Film Festival 2020 coverage here.