Dorian Film Awards Winners: Critics Laud the Best in Queer Cinema

GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics has announced their choices for the best in film of the last year. In line with many such bodies, Awards season front-runner The Power of the Dog won top honors, taking home three of the most prestigious awards for best picture and for best director and screenplay for Jane Campion. Perplexingly, Campion’s film failed to secure Best LGBTQ Film despite being nominated. That award went to Danish refugee film Flee which secured the most awards, largely by double dipping on categories as The Power of the Dog failed to do, winning both Best Documentary and Best LGBTQ Documentary as well as Best LGBTQ Film and Best Animated Film.

Other Best Film subcategories saw wins for Drive My Car as Best Foreign Language Film and Rebecca Hall’s thoughtful vintage melodrama Passing as Best Unsung Film, in which it triumphed over The Green Knight, Shiva Baby, Mass and Zola, which have routinely been shut out of this year’s major awards despite their universal acclaim. Passing was also nominated for Best Screenplay and both Best Performance and Best Supporting Performance for it’s stars Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. This latter award went to favourite Ariana DeBose for her performance as Anita in West Side Story, as did the Rising Star award, while in a pleasing piece of symmetry, her co-star Rita Moreno won the honorary Timeless Star award.

Similar honorary awards went to Pedro Almodovar, who won both Film Trailblazer and Wilde Artist – an category in which he was incongrously competing against Lil Nas X – while his latest film Parallel Mothers was nominated for both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Film Performance. Despite the pure chaos that the Best Actor race has been this year, Kristen Stewart won the title of Best Performance for Spencer, completing the female sweep of the awards’ gender non-specific acting categories. Spencer‘s only other nomination was for Jonny Greenwood’s score, a category it lost to Lin Manuel-Miranda’s adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s stage musical tick, tick…BOOM!

The somewhat nebulously titled Most Visually Striking Film went to Dune, continuing it’s sweep of this year’s micro-element awards. Narrowly missing out on wins were the likes of genderfluid body horror Titane, The Worst Person in the World and Mass, which were all nominated in multiple categories without securing any top spots, while a film that might perhaps be left wishing it had was Ridley Scott’s crime epic House of Gucci, which took home the backhanded compliment of Campiest Flick, for which it beat out marionette musical Annette, Old, Malignant and Cruella.

DORIAN FILM AWARD WINNERS: FULL LIST

BEST FILM
Drive My Car (Janus)
The Power of the Dog (Netflix)
The Worst Person in the World (Neon)
Tick, Tick… Boom! (Netflix)
West Side Story (20th Century Studios)

BEST LGBTQ FILM
Benedetta (IFC Films)
Flee (Neon, Participant)
Parallel Mothers (Sony Pictures Classics)
Shiva Baby (Utopia)
The Power of the Dog (Netflix)

BEST NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILM
Drive My Car (Janus)
Flee (Neon, Participant)
Parallel Mothers (Sony Pictures Classics)
The Worst Person in the World (Neon)
Titane (Neon)

BEST UNSUNG FILM
Mass (Bleecker Street)
Passing (Netflix)
Shiva Baby (Utopia)
The Green Knight (A24)
Zola (A24)

BEST DIRECTOR
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog (Netflix)
Julia Ducournau, Titane (Neon)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car (Janus Films) (Janus)
Steven Spielberg, West Side Story (20th Century Studios)
Denis Villeneuve, Dune (Warner Bros.)

BEST SCREENPLAY
Drive My Car (Janus) – Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe (adapted)
Passing (Netflix) – Rebecca Hall (adapted)
The Lost Daughter (Netflix) – Maggie Gyllenhaal (adapted)
The Power of the Dog (Netflix) – Jane Campion (adapted)
The Worst Person in the World (Neon) – Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier (original)

BEST FILM PERFORMANCE
Nicolas Cage, Pig (Neon)
Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Searchlight)
Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter (Netflix)
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog (Netflix)
Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers (Sony Pictures Classics)
Andrew Garfield, Tick, Tick… Boom! (Netflix)
Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World (Neon)
Simon Rex, Red Rocket (A24)
Kristen Stewart, Spencer (Neon)
Tessa Thompson, Passing (Netflix)

BEST SUPPORTING FILM PERFORMANCE
Ariana DeBose, West Side Story (20th Century Studios)
Robin de Jesús, Tick, Tick… Boom! (Netflix)
Colman Domingo, Zola (A24)
Ann Dowd, Mass (Bleecker Street)
Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog (Netflix)
Mike Faist, West Side Story (20th Century Studios)
Troy Kotsur, CODA (Apple)
Ruth Negga, Passing (Netflix)
Martha Plimpton, Mass (Bleecker Street)
Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog (Netflix)

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Flee (Neon, Participant)
Procession (Netflix)
Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It (Roadside Attractions)
Summer of Soul (Searchlight, Hulu)
The Rescue (Greenwich Entertainment, National Geographic)
The Velvet Underground (Apple)

BEST LGBTQ DOCUMENTARY
Ailey (Neon)
Flee (Neon, Participant)
My Name is Pauli Murray (Amazon Studios)
Pray Away (Netflix)
Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F***er (Kino Lorber, World of Wonder)

MOST VISUALLY STRIKING FILM
Dune (Warner Bros.)
Nightmare Alley (Searchlight)
Passing (Netflix)
The Power of the Dog (Netflix)
West Side Story (20th Century Studios)
Titane (Neon)

BEST ANIMATED FILM
Belle (GKids)
Encanto (Disney)
Flee (Neon, Participant)
Luca (Disney)
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Netflix, Sony)

BEST FILM MUSIC
Dune (Warner Bros.)
Encanto (Disney)
Spencer (Neon)
The Power of the Dog (Netflix)
Tick, Tick… Boom! (Netflix)

“WE’RE WILDE ABOUT YOU!” RISING STAR
Ariana DeBose
Alana Haim
Patti Harrison
Jasmin Savoy Brown
Rachel Zegler

WILDE ARTIST
(to a truly groundbreaking force in film, theatre and/or television)
Pedro Almodóvar
Jane Campion
Jennifer Coolidge
Lil Nas X
Lin-Manuel Miranda