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The 2022 Independent Spirit Awards nod towards possible Oscar winners

VPM | By Mandalit del Barco, Brianna Scott and Ciera Crawford

Published March 7, 2022 at 9:29 PM EST

Updated March 15, 2024

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

“The Lost Daughter” was the big winner of this year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards. NPR’s Mandalit del Barco attended the event yesterday, honoring some productions that were snubbed by the Oscars and some that just might win.

MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: On a California winter’s day, under a big tent on the Santa Monica beach, Maggie Gyllenhaal swept the Spirit Awards.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL: Women in film (laughter). Thank you. Thank you.

(CHEERING, APPLAUSE)

DEL BARCO: She won the award for directing “The Lost Daughter,” named this year’s best feature. She also won for writing the adapted screenplay about a woman who isn’t exactly mother of the year.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GYLLENHAAL: My film is in an unusual language. It’s the language of the minds of women. I’ve been sort of afraid to say that because my film is not just for women. It’s for everyone.

DEL BARCO: “The Lost Daughter” is expected to do well at the Oscars in three weeks. So is actor Troy Kotsur, who made history as the first actor who is deaf to win a Spirit Award. Through an interpreter, he picked up the best supporting male prize for his role as the fisherman father in “CODA.”

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TROY KOTSUR: (Through interpreter) My character, Frank Rossi, is really – the difference between Gloucester, Mass., and here in Santa Monica is that a deaf fisherman can’t afford a beer in Santa Monica.

(LAUGHTER)

KOTSUR: (Through interpreter) It’s expensive, you know?

DEL BARCO: Another Spirit Award winner and shoo-in for an Oscar was the documentary “Summer Of Soul.”

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “SUMMER OF SOUL”)

GLADYS KNIGHT AND THE PIPS: (Singing) I bet you’re wondering how I knew, baby, baby, baby…

DEL BARCO: First-time director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson accepted the award for the film made from found footage of the star-studded 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

QUESTLOVE: It took a village of people to free this film from its 50-year sentence sitting inside of a basement. It starts with the dream of two gentlemen in Harlem – Tony Lawrence and Hal Tulchin. It starts with 300,000 beautiful residents of Harlem.

DEL BARCO: The Spirit Awards also honored indie productions and performances that are not Oscars nominees, among them Taylour Paige, who won the best female lead award for her role as an exotic dancer in the film “Zola.”

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TAYLOUR PAIGE: I really, really love the words independent, film and spirit.

DEL BARCO: Simon Rex picked up the best male lead award. In the film “Red Rocket,” he plays a washed-up porn star.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SIMON REX: This movie was made for a million dollars with a 10-person crew with no permits. We were hiding from police. We were hiding from neighbors. I was running down the street butt naked.

(CHEERING, APPLAUSE)

REX: Like, if this doesn’t embody, like, the Spirit Award of an independent film, I don’t know what does. This is basically a glorified student film.

DEL BARCO: For the second year, television shows and performances were also celebrated. Top winners were Thuso Mbedu from “The Underground Railroad” and “Squid Game’s” Lee Jung-jae. “Reservation Dogs” was crowned best new scripted series. Actress Devery Jacobs dedicated the show’s ensemble cast award to Native actors before them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DEVERY JACOBS: Working in Hollywood, playing antagonists in Western movies and mythic, stoic and savage Indians to Native creators who’ve had to endure and break down tropes in this industry, we are here accepting this award because of you. We are walking on the very path that you fought for us and carved out for us.

DEL BARCO: Some of the winners, like actress Ruth Negga from the film “Passing,” accepted their awards by video. Others were awarded during commercial breaks, so TV viewers didn’t get to see the cinematographer of “Passing” win. They didn’t see the Japanese film “Drive My Car” win for best international film. Clips of their remarks played briefly, a hint of what’s to come during the Oscars.

More pressing, though, was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a topic brought up by this year’s honorary chair, Kristen Stewart.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KRISTEN STEWART: We stand with the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing this war, both Ukrainians and those of other ethnicities and nationalities who are being denied safe harbor.

DEL BARCO: The ceremony’s hosts Megan Mullally and her husband, Nick Offerman, were more blunt. On stage, they sent an expletive message to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and they gave him the finger.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

NICK OFFERMAN: To Putin.

DEL BARCO: Mandalit del Barco, NPR News, Los Angeles.

(SOUNDBITE OF FLYING LOTUS SONG, “9 CARROTS”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Mandalit del Barco

As an arts correspondent based at NPR West, Mandalit del Barco reports and produces stories about film, television, music, visual arts, dance and other topics. Over the years, she has also covered everything from street gangs to Hollywood, police and prisons, marijuana, immigration, race relations, natural disasters, Latino arts and urban street culture (including hip hop dance, music, and art). Every year, she covers the Oscars and the Grammy awards for NPR, as well as the Sundance Film Festival and other events. Her news reports, feature stories and photos, filed from Los Angeles and abroad, can be heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, Alt.latino, and npr.org.

del Barco's reporting has taken her throughout the United States, including Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco and Miami. Reporting further afield as well, del Barco traveled to Haiti to report on the aftermath of the devastating earthquake. She has chronicled street gangs exported from the U.S. to El Salvador and Honduras, and in Mexico, she reported about immigrant smugglers, musicians, filmmakers and artists. In Argentina, del Barco profiled tango legend Carlos Gardel, and in the Philippines, she reported a feature on balikbayan boxes. From China, del Barco contributed to NPR's coverage of the United Nations' Women's Conference. She also spent a year in her birthplace, Peru, working on a documentary and teaching radio journalism as a Fulbright Fellow and on a fellowship with the Knight International Center For Journalists.

In addition to reporting daily stories, del Barco produced half-hour radio documentaries about gangs in Central America, Latino hip hop, L.A. Homegirls, artist Frida Kahlo, New York's Palladium ballroom and Puerto Rican "Casitas."

Before moving to Los Angeles, del Barco was a reporter for NPR Member station WNYC in New York City. She started her radio career on the production staff of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. However her first taste for radio came as a teenager, when she and her brother won an award for an NPR children's radio contest.

del Barco's reporting experience extends into newspaper and magazines. She served on the staffs of The Miami Herald and The Village Voice, and has done freelance reporting. She has written articles for Latina magazine and reported for the weekly radio show Latino USA.

Stories written by del Barco have appeared in several books including Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share their Holiday Memories (Vintage Books) and Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember their Mothers (Vintage Books). del Barco contributed to an anthology on rap music and hip hop culture in the book, Droppin' Science (Temple University Press).

Peruvian writer Julio Villanueva Chang profiled del Barco's life and career for the book Se Habla Espanol: Voces Latinas en USA (Alfaguara Press).

She mentors young journalists through NPR's "Next Generation", Global Girl, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and on her own, throughout the U.S. and Latin America.

A fourth generation journalist, del Barco was born in Lima, Peru, to a Peruvian father and Mexican-American mother. She grew up in Baldwin, Kansas, and in Oakland, California, and has lived in Manhattan, Madrid, Miami, Lima and Los Angeles. She began her journalism career as a reporter, columnist and editor for the Daily Californian while studying anthropology and rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned a Master's degree in journalism from Columbia University with her thesis, "Breakdancers: Who are they, and why are they spinning on their heads?"

For those who are curious where her name comes from, "Mandalit" is the name of a woman in a song from Carmina Burana, a musical work from the 13th century put to music in the 20th century by composer Carl Orff.

See stories by Mandalit del Barco