As the landscape of home viewing and streaming continuously changes, major studios have taken more notice with schemes of simultaneous streaming/theatrical releases at a higher price point. Paramount is the next to come up with a streaming plan, though this is one that may have some legs. First reported at the Hollywood Reporter, the mega studio has partnered with mega theater chain AMC to shorten the theatrical release window for two upcoming films. Two October releases, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension and Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, will hit VOD just 17 days following its theatrical release (as opposed to the typical theatrical runs of 4-6 weeks for films of this size). This may be a small impact at this point, and you may not be interested in the two films that will experiment with the strategy, but it is important to know that Hollywood is taking more notice on how we consume films. It’s still difficult to see the theatrical model changing dynamically, but more diverse viewing platforms is a step in the right direction. Before you check out a new Paramount film from the comfort of your couch, here are some new titles to streaming to check out this weekend.

Netflix

Faults (Riley Stearns, 2014)

The best films of the year so far just keep dropping on Netflix. Faults, #19 on our mid-year best of list, is a thrilling and darkly funny two-hander between a woman escaped from a cult (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and the crack deprogramer hired to ease her back into society (Leland Orser, in a career performance). Cults have been a hot topic in indie dramas the past few years, so now we’re seeing films able to take those tropes into new directions – Faults does so in clever and rewarding ways. In our “Must See Indie” review of the film we called it an “original feature debut, a compelling chamber piece boasting fantastic performances, and so soaked in charisma that it’s almost impossible not to be enchanted from hilarious start to insatiable finish.”

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
The Long Way Home (Mark Jonathan Harris, 1997)
The Search for General Tso (Ian Cheney, 2014)
Serena (Susanne Bier, 2014)
Wild Canaries (Lawrence Michael Levine, 2014)
Winston Churchill: Walking with Destiny (Richard Trank, 2010)

Fandor

A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)

This week Fandor is profiling the work of American indie pioneer John Cassavetes, with A Woman Under the Influence, his most vital film, being the highlight. Starring Gena Rowlands in her career defining performance, it is one of the most challenging looks at mental illness on-screen. Cassavetes’s matter-of-fact style puts you right in the room while the struggling Mabel and her hardened husband (Peter Falk) have a series of intense, emotional altercations. A Woman Under the Influence certainly isn’t an easy film-watching experience, but it is a perfect example of the power of cinema for character, story and thoughtful direction. Other Cassavetes films available on Fandor this week include The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Faces, Opening Night and Shadows – and all are available without Fandor’s two-week viewing window, but that doesn’t mean you should wait to see this fantastic films.

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945)
The Past Is a Grotesque Animal (Jason Miller, 2014)
Under the Roofs of Paris (René Clair 1930)
La Vie de Bohème (Aki Kaurismäki, 1992)
Vivre sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962)

MUBI

A Simple Life (Ann Hui, 2011)

One of the unheralded auteurs currently working today, Ann Hui’s simple, touching films often look into worlds that aren’t represented well in cinema. A Simple Life is a great example of this, the story of an elderly maid after suffering a stroke. After moving to a retirement home, the woman begins a friendship with a young man she cared for as a maid for many years. Usually when a film is set in a retirement home there is some sort of evil or incompetence at play, or at the very least the staggering melodrama of aging, but Hui chooses to focus on simple pleasures like food and friendship. There are certainly dramatic elements that come into play, but the film never strains for them. It is a nice change of pace.

Other titles new to MUBI this week:
Artificial Paradises (Marcos Prado, 2012)
Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2002)
Fogo (Yulene Olaizola, 2012)
A Room with a View (James Ivory, 1985)
Tears of the Black Tiger (Wisit Sasanatieng, 2000)

Video On-Demand

’71 (Yann Demange, 2014)

One of the most overlooked films of this year, ’71 is a taught thriller starring Jack O’Connell as a British soldier who gets trapped behind enemy lines after an incident on the streets of Northern Ireland. A smart mix of action, thriller, war and espionage genres, ’71 perfectly uses its unique time and space to create a unique film. At times it feels like a 1980s hero-driven action flick before seamlessly transitioning into something like a supremely good John le Carré adaptation. Set in a highly political environment, the film deftly navigates the issues between the people and its government without being didactic. Now that ’71 is on DVD and VOD, it can hopefully find some legs as we begin ramping up to our best of the year lists.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014)
Merchants of Doubt (Robert Kenner, 2014)
Red Knot (Scott Cohen, 2014)
Woman in Gold (Simon Curtis 2015)

With 2014 coming to a close, the tradition of an annual post-mortem begins. Was 2014 a good year? A bad year? Do the highlights outweigh the lowlights, or vice versa? While everyone will have an opinion on the quality of 2014’s output in film, one point will be hard to dispute: a lot of great foreign films came out this year.

That’s why we put together this list of the 13 Best Foreign Language Films of 2014. Three of these picks are quite obvious; they also placed on our list of the 20 Best Films of 2014 (with two placing in the top ten). The other ten are just as good in our eyes, placing on some of our individual ‘Best Of’ lists for the year, and in some cases came extremely close to placing on our main list. These 13 films make up a diverse list, but they’re all unique, challenging and thought-provoking in their own ways. Watch any film on this list, and you won’t regret it.

Way Too Indie’s 13 Best Foreign Language Films of 2014

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

There have been many movies like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night in that there have been many movies that borrow stuff from other movies. Ana Lily Amirpour’s alluring debut feature is a rarity, however, in that it gives back what it takes, honoring its inspirations (Leone, Kiarostami, various horror classics) by using their wisdom to create something wholly new and exciting rather than retreading old ground. Amirpour’s out-of-nowhere use of vampire mythology to comment on Iranian gender politics is ingenious, and if heavier things like foreign gender inequity doesn’t suit your fancy, the film operates perfectly as a vintage romance, a pulpy street drama, and a moody horror piece as well. It sounds like a hodgepodge, but it’s not; everything fits snugly in its right place. Shot in Bakersfield, California in inky black and white, the film is a vision (especially for a shoestring production) much like lead actor Sheila Vand, the vicious vampire in a chador who quickly tears apart any notions of “vulnerable females” the film’s title suggests. [Bernard]

Force Majeure

The winner of Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Prize has a premise so intriguing that it can be hard to see the film’s other qualities. Particularly how beautiful Force Majeure films the scenic French Alps, holding shots long enough to let its central character ski off into the snowy fog. The story here is a family takes a ski vacation and gets engulfed in the snow cloud of a controlled avalanche; however, in the panic, the father Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) briefly abandons his wife and two children. From there, Ruben Östlund’s film illustrates the damage this impulse has on the psyche of Tomas, his wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), and their two young children. Force Majeure can be uncomfortable to watch but Östlund mines those moments for wonderfully honest laughs. If rumors of an upcoming American remake are true, it’s easy to imagine Jason Sudekis turning Tomas into a broadly comic role. In this highly original Swedish gem, both Kuhnke and Kongsli deliver hilariously understated performances that can demonstrate the evolving relationship dynamic with a simple glare. It’s all so good that Force Majeure took up two spots on Way Too Indie’s Best Scenes of 2014 list. [Zach]

Ida

“The brilliance of Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida starts with the bleak elegance of its aesthetic: a black-and-white palate presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio that is haunting in its simplicity.” Read Michael’s take on the film in our Best Films of 2014 feature.

Leviathan

Russian cinema has historically given us some of the most aesthetically refined and formally adept films ever. From Eisenstein and Vertov, through Kalatozov and Tarkovsky, Russia was prosperous during its Soviet era. Recent times, though, haven’t been as kind, and if Andrey Zvyagintsev has anything to say about it, that’s all about to change. Of course, with his latest masterwork Leviathan, he says so much, especially since the actual state of Russia is a crucial character in itself. Nikolai (Aleksey Serebryakov, in an Oscar-worthy performance) is desperately trying to hold on to everything that makes life in his little town by the Barents Sea complete. His wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova) and best friend Dmitry (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), a lawyer from Moscow, act as his support group against the town’s mayor (Roman Madyanov, in an Oscar-worthy performance) who has plans to demolish his house and build corporate property over it. The film is an incisive examination of stifled life under a labyrinthine structure of corruption, a deeply profound story with the kind of sensibilities of fragile human condition on par with the greatest Russian novelists. Zvyagintsev directs Leviathan as a man who is one hundred percent in sync with the invisible powers of the moving image, and with his fantastically talented team (both behind and in front of the camera), is raising cinematic standards for Russian cinema yet again. [Nik]

Like Father, Like Son

The “switched at birth” premise sounds far more suitable for a goofy ’80s comedy or a made-for-basic-cable tearjerker than it does a modern Japanese drama. Yet in writer/director Hirokazu Koreeda‘s skilled filmmaking hands, the sublime Like Father, Like Son uses the premise mostly as a hook, pivoting off it to take a deeper look at fatherhood, nature vs. nurture, and providing vs. participating. When two sets of parents are told their six-year-old (!) sons were accidentally switched at birth, decisions must be made. The parents decide because six years have passed, the children should be gradually integrated into the opposite family’s life, with the long-term goal being a permanent switch. The slow-play not only proves to be more difficult than originally thought, it allows a patient length of time (months in the film) for a meaningful tale to be told and considerable emotional impact to be felt. It also prevents the story from being hijacked by manufactured, panic-fueled melodrama. Everyone in the cast is excellent, but Masaharu Fukuyama shines as the financially comfortable but career-driven father who must come to terms with more about himself and his past than he was prepared to do. How do you say “Pass the Kleenex” in Japanese? [Michael]

Norte, the End of History

Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan may be this year’s closest example to the humanistic depth of a Russian novel, but Lav Diaz’s Norte, the End of History took a Russian classic and turned out a sprawling four hour re-imagining set in the Philippines almost to singlehandedly prove how quickly cultural barriers can shatter when you use art as the hammer. This is Dostoevsky’s Crimes and Punishment as seen through the glacially paced and enormously immersive world of Lav Diaz, alienating mainstream audiences since 1999. In case you haven’t read our review, we’re big fans. Norte sees Fabian (Sid Lucero, who does really brilliant work here considering the scope and the evolutions his character goes through) as the Filipino Raskolnikov, committing murder more as an attempt to reach a philosophical conclusion than out of practical reasons, and left disillusioned. Diaz’s branches away from Dostoevsky most vividly because he pays equal attention to the man Fabian accuses of the murder, and the man’s wife left to fend for herself and her children. In this way, Norte is more of an expansion than an adaptation, where the gorgeous milieu photographed with a keen sense for environment by Larry Manda leaves Diaz’s imagination to take center stage and pull you into an incredibly involved story of crushed human spirit. Here lie the fastest four hours of the year. [Nik]

Stranger by the Lake

I find it interesting to note about myself that my capacity for the audacious and erotic in a film goes up substantially when it happens to be foreign. I imagine it’s how non-Americans feel about the way their capacity for pyrotechnics and CG must increase to watch our films. Even so French film Stranger by the Lake pushed me to the edge of my extended limits. This homoerotic thriller feels like a combination of an adolescent summer outdoor romance, mixed with a Hitchcockian thriller, mixed with gay porn. But put it all together and it’s an engaging look at the extent to which lust and emotions can cloud our judgement. Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), an overly lubido-driven and naively romantic man, spends his days at the lake looking for sex and possibly love. He finds instant lust for Michel (Christophe Paou), a tall, dark and handsome man known for his hard-to-get ways. So great is his attraction, he turns a blind eye when he sees Michel unceremoniously dump a lover he’s grown weary of by drowning him in the lake. Without making any statements Alain Guiraudie’s minimalistic film explores varying levels of attraction and the very human habit of misplacing feelings. While all the sex feels absurd, its really only a backdrop to the tensions at play. And those tensions build to a harebrained ending that while thrilling, mainly serves to show the extent to which we are capable of lying to ourselves. [Ananda]

The Strange Little Cat

Ramon Zurcher’s The Strange Little Cat is fiercely non-narrative and non-mainstream. A real-time examination of a German apartment during a busy day, the film zooms at a brief 72 minutes, with its characters entering and exiting still frames, simply living their lives. While the plot rambles through conversations, the film has an uncanny attention to detail. The camera’s eye seems to wander until it catches something interesting to witness or study – in one of my favorite scenes this year, we watch an entire game of Connect Four played without any conversation or distraction. I don’t know if The Strange Little Cat has a lot of deep, hidden meaning, but it is a strangely addictive and entertaining film. And, yes, there is a cat, though it really isn’t all that strange. [Aaron]

Stray Dogs

I’ll get straight to the point: Stray Dogs is a masterpiece. Director Tsai Ming-Liang’s final feature film finds him setting his sights on a family in poverty, a topic fitting his slow, patient, and uncompromising style perfectly. With Tsai’s muse Lee Kang-Sheng playing the father, Stray Dogs follows him as he tries to support his two children with menial work, including a job as a human billboard. For these characters, time takes on a different meaning, and Tsai’s approach to cinematic duration similarly breaks conventions. These people simultaneously struggling and stagnate, and Tsai’s static camera captures a range of emotions through shots that sometimes go past the ten minute mark. I haven’t even mentioned how immaculately composed all of these shots are, making it quite easy to stare at them for what can feel like an eternity. And I haven’t said a word about the film’s baffling and incredible second half, where Tsai hits a sort of reset button that suddenly introduces one surreal and achingly gorgeous image after another. Stray Dogs may be challenging to watch, but if you’re willing to adjust to Tsai’s rhythms, the results reach a level of transcendence few other films can achieve. [C.J.]

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Isao Takahata, considered by most to be Studio Ghibli’s second fiddle, made what might be the best work of the great Japanese animation house. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya isn’t as emotionally devastating as Takahata’s The Grave of the Fireflies, but it is every bit as rich in character, theme and story. The tale of the fairy princess is both lightly entertaining and expansive, with elements of fantasy, nature, humor, tragedy, romance, quest, history, and tradition in Japanese jidaigeki. Stylistically, this is one of the most beautiful animations I have ever seen. I’m not someone that usually cries out when technological advances pushes out the old ways of movie making, but this is a prime example of the possibilities and, frankly, the necessity of hand-drawn animation. I don’t know much about the actual production, so I don’t know how much of the film is man-made vs. computer generated, but there is something intrinsic about the animation that hits on a higher level. The wispy, dreamlike movements of the characters and environments are the perfect way to tell this story. With The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Isao Takahata has capped off a stellar career with a stellar work, a wonderful tribute to animation and Japanese storytelling. As he moves on, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is surely the type of film that will inspire film artists around the globe interested in stories with emotionally complex narratives and extraordinary focus in style. [Aaron]

Two Days, One Night

“…in Two Days, One Night, [the Dardenne Brothers’] first collaboration with an A-lister proves to be terrific, and for fans, assuaging.” Read Bernard’s take on the film in our Best Films of 2014 feature.

Winter Sleep

“…there’s simply no other film that will suck you into its world faster and smoother than this opulent Turkish delight.” Read Nik’s take on the film in our Best Films of 2014 feature.

Young & Beautiful

Leave it to provocative French filmmaker François Ozon to explore adolescent sexuality with masterful style and deliberate focus. Ozon divides Young & Beautiful into four seasons, observing Isabelle (Marine Vacth in an exceptional breakout performance) as she enters her sexual discovery phase near her 17th birthday. In the beginning her actions are innocent enough, losing her virginity during a summer vacation. However, when the film jumps ahead to autumn, she’s secretly working as a high-class prostitute. With someone else behind the wheel Young & Beautiful could have easily veered into softcore porn territory, but Ozon’s skillful artistry shines through in this voyeuristic coming-of-age study. The film astutely observes teenage rebellion and self discovery without misplaced melodrama, manipulating emotions, or judging its characters. For those reasons Ozon allows the audience to draw their own conclusions, making Young & Beautiful an excellent conversation piece. [Dustin]

Honorable Mentions

We always want to spread the love at Way Too Indie, and some of us felt so passionately about certain candidates for this list that we had to give them a mention of some sort. Lukas Moodysson’s We Are The Best! is a total blast, a film combining the rebellious nature of punk with the innocence of youth perfectly; Pascale Ferran’s diptych Bird People is, by far, one of the year’s most daringly original films of the year; Yuval Adler’s Bethlehem is a taut, compelling procedural from Israel; Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan stands alongside Citizenfour as one of the year’s most vital documentaries; Sean Ellis’ Metro Manila proves that a familiar story can still feel exciting when done right; and Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman is as funny as it is baffling, turning out to be one of 2014’s true curiosities.

Tonight, plenty of big names and stars in independent film gathered together for the Gotham Independent Film Awards in New York. Earlier today everyone was talking about the New York Film Critics Circle winners, but tonight was one of the first “true” award shows of Oscar season (sorry Hollywood Film Awards, you don’t count). And like the Independent Spirit Awards, Gotham spreads the love to the year’s best independent films. All in all, it was a nice way to sit back and see some genuinely great talent get rewarded.

Boyhood surprisingly lost the night’s main award, losing Best Picture to Birdman. Comparing the two films, Boyhood seems like the easier bet for an indie-based award show like this, but the award jury (including the likes of Jon Hamm and Jane Fonda) preferred Alejandro González Iñárritu’s visually crazy satire. We raved about the film back when it closed the New York Film Festival, so it’s sure to earn plenty of other trophies for its mantle in the coming months.

There were unsurprising wins, though: Best Documentary went to Citizenfour, Michael Keaton won Best Actor for Birdman (he’s already trying out material for if he wins the Oscar, based on his speech), and Julianne Moore won Best Actress for Still Alice. They’re all the current frontrunners in their respective categories, so it didn’t come as a shock to see them end up winning.

One of the night’s more pleasant surprises came when Ana Lily Amirpour, director of our Must See Indie pick A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, won the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award. It’s one of the year’s most accomplished debut features, and the fact alone that it beat out Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler says quite a lot. Also great: Tessa Thompson winning Breakthrough Performance for Dear White People, beating out Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood. Thompson was the best part of Dear White People by far, so it’s a deserved win.

Special awards were given to Steve Carrell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo for their work in Foxcatcher, as well as Tilda Swinton, Foxcatcher director Bennett Miller and Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. Read the full list of winners below, and let us know what you think deserved to win or got robbed.

Gotham Independent Film Awards Winners

Best Feature: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Best Actress: Julianne Moore in Still Alice
Best Actor: Michael Keaton in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Best Documentary: Citizenfour
Breakthrough Actor: Tessa Thompson in Dear White People
Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award: Ana Lily Amirpour for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Gotham Independent Film Audience Award: Boyhood

With their late night social lives, sensual eating habits, and lonely existences, vampires are already among the most romantic and mysterious of mythical beings. They’ve been used in plenty of different settings, but Ana Lily Amirpour‘s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night may be the first to harness the ripeness of young love with a vampire, crossed with a black and white western, with a dash of Frank Miller’s nighttime crime scenery. More amazing is that this genre mix is executed in a way that is both artfully quiet and amazingly hip.

Here’s the premise: in the mythical Iranian scum town of Bad City the people fear the local thugs, either working for them or feeding their drug addictions as clientele. In such a town, James Dean-esque Arash (Arash Marandi) is a rare good guy, caring for his junkie father and working hard to afford his gorgeous vintage Thunderbird. At night a girl (Sheila Vand), her eyes rimmed black in eyeliner, covered from head to toe in a hijab, walks in the darkness, following men. One night she encounters Saeed (Dominic Rains), a self-absorbed and dangerous drug dealer who earlier that day took Arash’s beloved car as payment owed by his father for drugs. With nary a word Saeed is seduced by the girl’s dark eyes and lips. He takes her to his extravagant apartment, letting her look around while he indulges in some of his drugs, music pumping, eventually giving her a pathetic sexy dance. And when she does finally come near to him, placing his finger in her mouth seductively, she counters his intentions by cleanly biting off his finger before draining him completely. It’s horrifying, hilarious, and, somehow, heroic.

This is the gritty texture of Amirpour’s film. Shot in crisp black and white, the film’s setting is distinctly more California dust bowl than Iran, which makes sense since it was shot near Bakersfield. Oil pumps grind up and down, sucking black oil out of the ground while the girl drains the city slowly in her own way. And though she speaks quite rarely, the girl appears to be in all other respects aside from her late night diet, a typical, albeit lonely, young woman. She lives alone in an apartment where band posters paper her walls, a disco ball turns overhead, she wears skinny jeans and an oversized french-style striped shirt, and she plays the latest new wave music, dancing by herself in the fashion of a vampire girl yearning for more. At night she has a distinct taste: men, preferably the bad sort. In an especially frightening scene a young street urchin (Milad Eghbali) is stopped by the girl and she threatens him into always being a “good boy,” then takes his skateboard with her.

Thus, one night as she skateboards down a street in Bad City, hijab flowing behind her, the girl encounters Arash for the first time. He’s dejected and high after a bad party. His innocence intrigues her (and those big brown eyes as well) and she takes him home. The romance between the girl and Arash is entirely atmospheric. Amirpour takes her time, allowing the mood, strobing light, and dance-y music of Arash and the girl’s first moment of attraction to wash over viewers. It’s beautiful, and sexy as hell. Marandi is the good-boy-with-an-edge every girl—or vampire girl—dreams of, and he plays Arash with no sense of irony. Vand is an absolute delight, giving off a sweet and vulnerable school girl appeal that changes swiftly with a whiff of fresh blood. But she’s no animalistic vampire, she’s a woman in charge of her desires, as overpowering as they can sometimes be.

Between Arash’s old-fashioned principles, and the girl’s progressive (especially by Iranian ideals) position of power—exemplified by her murder of a man who had just before his death exploited a prostitute before leaving her in the dust penniless—the cultural censure is clear. Amirpour is transparent with her reversals, self-aware even, poking fun by dressing Arash in a Dracula costume when he first meets the girl, assuring her she has nothing to fear.

Lyle Vincent’s cinematography is as wide as any screen comes, capturing minute details in every two-tone high-contrast frame. Produced by Elijah Wood among others (well, he is a DJ and the soundtrack is phenomenal, maybe indie-music insiders really do all know each other), the film is written by Amirpour and one of the few things I might criticize her for is leaning a bit heavily on her visuals. Luckily, said visuals are so impressive they distract from any realizations that not only is dialogue between our romantic leads sparse, it’s almost non-existent, which makes the film’s ending seem slightly drastic, albeit not unsatisfying. My other complaint is a lack of backstory on this elusive and nameless “girl,” but ask and ye shall receive. Amirpour has written a comic book chronicling life in Bad City before the events of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night to be simultaneously released with the film.

With all the charm of Amélie, all the horror of Nosferatu, all the youthful self-awareness of La Nouvelle Vague, and all the atmosphere of a black and white spaghetti western, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night manages to be a strong entry into any of the 6 or 7 genres and sub-genres it fits into. Captivating at every turn, watching the film is like seeing the birth of a trend come into style. Amirpour harnesses the essence of indie filmmaking in her début, showcasing an adroit and enticing talent the likes of which we don’t see every day.

You might be thinking “Already?!” but yes, award season is already starting. Today, New York’s Gotham Independent Film Awards put out their nominees, a list filled with pleasant surprises and some very obvious choices.

Let’s start with the obvious choice: Boyhood. Any indie award would be insane to deny Richard Linklater’s film, possibly the indie event of the year, some love, so Gotham understandably gave it four nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Ethan Hawke), Best Actress (Patricia Arquette) and Breakthrough Actor (Ellar Coltrane). Also unsurprising is Birdman nabbing three nominations for Best Picture and Best Actor (Michael Keaton). Expect to hear even more about Birdman in the months to come.

Because the Gotham Awards are about independent film, that gives some great underrated films and performances the chance for some exposure through a nomination. The biggest surprise might be Under the Skin and Scarlett Johansson scoring nominations for Best Picture and Actress. It’ll be unlikely for Jonathan Glazer’s strange sci-fi to get much love outside of critics’ circles this year, so nominations like these are nice to see. Another great choice by Gotham: Giving Ira Sachs’ wonderful Love is Strange a Best Picture nomination. Sachs’ film, a quietly heartbreaking drama, seems bound to get left out this year once the awards race kicks into high gear (if Best Actor weren’t so competitive this year, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina would have been locks). Any recognition for Love is Strange is a huge plus.

Read on below for the full list of nominees, including the nominees for Breakthrough Director and Actor. For those more interested in the bigger awards, take note of Oscar Isaac’s nomination for A Most Violent Year. The film hasn’t come out yet (it opens AFI Fest next month), so this nomination might be a hint of another shake-up in the coming weeks. And if anyone’s wondering where current Best Actor frontrunner Steve Carrell is, Gotham decided to give Carrell and co-stars Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo a special award for their ensemble performances in Foxcatcher.

The Gotham Independent Film Awards will hold their awards ceremony on December 1st.

Best Feature

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Love Is Strange
Under the Skin

Best Actor

Bill Hader in The Skeleton Twins
Ethan Hawke in Boyhood
Oscar Isaac in A Most Violent Year
Michael Keaton in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Miles Teller in Whiplash (Sony Pictures Classics)

Best Actress

Patricia Arquette in Boyhood
Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond the Lights
Julianne Moore in Still Alice
Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin
Mia Wasikowska in Tracks

Best Documentary

Actress
CITIZENFOUR
Life Itself
Manakamana
Point and Shoot

Breakthrough Actor

Riz Ahmed in Nightcrawler
Macon Blair in Blue Ruin
Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood
Joey King in Wish I Was Here
Jenny Slate in Obvious Child
Tessa Thompson in Dear White People

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award

Ana Lily Amirpour for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
James Ward Byrkit for Coherence
Dan Gilroy for Nightcrawler
Eliza Hittman for It Felt Like Love
Justin Simien for Dear White People

Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the Iranian film that premiered five months ago at Sundance. The film also opened the New Directors/New Films event in New York.

Shot in black and white, the feature debut of Ana Lily Amirpour is described as a neo-noir Spaghetti Western and is set in an imaginary Iranian ghost town, overrun with seedy characters all unknowingly being stalked by a vampire girl.

Argo actress Sheila Vand stars as the vampire and Arash Marandi (Kunduz: The Incident at Hadji Ghafur), Dominic Rains (The Taqwacores), Mozhan Marnó (House of Cards, The Stoning of Soraya M), Rome Shadanloo, Marshall Manesh and Milad Eghbali are also in the film.

Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release for the film in October, and will follow-up with a digital and home media release early next year. They are partnering with Vice Media for promotion and social media campaigns. A wise choice given the film’s accolades on its original music choices and its off-beat genre.