The Film Independent Spirit Awards were handed out on Saturday. Idris Elba won the first acting award for his role as a merciless military general in Beasts. (The alum of The Wire also won Best Supporting Actor at January’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.) Elba was greeted with a partial standing ovation for the win, and he brought along with him to the stage his young co-star Attah to accept the award, telling the teen, “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
Attah won an award too, beating out the likes of Jason Segel (The End of the Tour) and Ben Mendelsohn (Mississippi Grind) to win his first major trophy this awards season for playing Beasts’ fun-loving-kid-turned-killing-machine in an unnamed African country.
The Ghana-born teen earned the night’s most rousing reaction, with most of the crowd rising to their feet to applaud him. He delivered a gracious speech, thanking all the film’s major players, from director Cary Fukunaga down to the costume designer.
But perhaps the event’s most impressive win, as far as inclusiveness is concerned, came when Best Supporting Female went to the African-American transgender actress Mya Taylor, whom director Sean Baker plucked off the streets of Los Angeles for his low-budget drama-comedy, Tangerine, a film shot entirely on iPhones.
“I had come from almost nothing,” Taylor said while collecting the award. “And then I got this role in this movie and my life [did] a 360.” She wrapped up her speech with a plea to the filmmakers in attendance: “There is transgender talent. There’s very beautiful transgender talent. So you better get out there and put it in your next movie.”
Source: Yahoo News
