The Spirit Awards No Longer Define Independent Film. And That’s the Point

On Saturday afternoon, the Independent Spirit Awards took place in Hollywood. Not on the beach in Santa Monica, where the white tent and ocean air made the ceremony feel like a scrappy, sunlit Oscar alternative, but inside the dark and historic Hollywood Palladium on Sunset Boulevard.

The official explanation was logistics. With the 2028 Olympics coming to Los Angeles, the beach was unavailable.

That may be true, but watching the ceremony made it hard to escape another conclusion. High-profile nominees like Seth Rogen and Ethan Hawke were absent; so were a number of winners, including “Adolescence” stars Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper. Acceptance speeches were swift and uneventful. Host Ego Nwodim was game, but the vibe was off.

I kept thinking about the Spirit Awards back in 1999, when Ally Sheedy won Best Actress for “High Art” and gave a fantastically unhinged 10-minute acceptance speech: “Everyone’s been really quick, I’m not gonna be quick. I’ve never been nominated for anything before, this may never happen again, I’m takin’ my fucking time.”

Nearly three decades later, the show struggled to generate the sense that something larger was unfolding around it. The venue change made for a tidy metaphor, but this was a shift in gravity.

For decades, Sundance, the Spirit Awards, and the broader festival ecosystem functioned as independent film’s coordination layer. They owned the space that launched careers, made deals, conferred reputations, and collectively decided what mattered.

Festivals still provide something nothing else fully replicates: concentrated attention. For a few days, the entire ecosystem is forced to look in the same direction.

Sometimes they still do, but they no longer hold the monopoly.

Studios are skipping festivals. Films are painfully slow to sell. Even the awards can feel disconnected.

It’s easy to frame this as decline, but I talk with filmmakers every day who demonstrate that independent film is at zero risk of disappearing. What’s changing is the role legacy institutions play in making it possible.

Festivals signaled taste and reduced friction by concentrating decisionmaking into a few key moments each year. Competitive acquisitions established pricing. Festivals and awards coordinate attention by assembling industry, press, and audiences in one place.

When institutions start to feel optional, it changes the job. At the same time, new institutions are beginning to emerge.

On the same weekend as the Spirit Awards, Creator Camp announced the launch of a brand content agency arm. The move formalized something that had already been taking shape. Creator Camp finances projects, develops talent, produces features, and creates brand-funded work for companies like Anthropic, Coca-Cola, and Spotify. It operates across development, production, and monetization.

That’s a studio. More will follow. And none of them are being built to align with legacy systems.

That’s another reason the Spirit Awards felt different this year. The ceremony hasn’t fundamentally changed (although it’s certainly had sharper writing), but it now has a different relationship to the industry it celebrates. Even if it goes back to the beach in 2029, it will return to a world that no longer organizes itself around that tent.

An awards show held in a parking lot under a giant tent represented a particular vision of independent cinema. It existed in contrast to Hollywood even as it leaned on its structures for validation and support. The ceremony gathered the community in one place, physically and symbolically, reinforcing the idea that this was where independent film came together.

Today, no single institution holds that authority. It’s been decentralized. Defining the future happens across many rooms, platforms, and parallel systems. Creators, capital, distribution, and audience each operate with their own sources of power and their own metrics of success. (Those raised in the legacy system may miss the gatekeepers. Say what you will, but they were one-stop shopping.)

The Spirit Awards still matter. So do festivals. But they are no longer the places where independent film becomes possible. They are a few of the places where it becomes visible.

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Conversations about breaking into indie filmmaking often avoid the topic of casting for understandable reasons — if you’ve even made it to the serious casting stage on a feature, something has already gone right for you, and true beginners are better off focusing their efforts elsewhere. But those who want to learn more would be well-advised to read this essay, which explains how casting a small film requires adjusting your life to a distinct rhythm and watching endless amounts of material.

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3. Stop Pitching Your Movie to People Who Aren’t Listening by Donny Broussard

Indie filmmakers love the phrase “your movie won’t be for everyone” when it comes to breaking creative rules, but we’re often less enthusiastic about the idea when it’s time to remember that it means lots of people won’t be interested in our film. This essay is a great reminder that it’s easy to waste time trying to sell your ideas to people who will never actually be interested in them — time that would be better spent trying to find your specific audience.

2. Can Revival Houses “Revive” Cinema? by Ellis J. Sutton

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1. Why Everything Is Shot Correctly and Feels Wrong by Jose Zambrano Cassella

A common sentiment on film-centric corners of the internet is how soulless many recent films look despite being technically proficient. Even if shots are composed “correctly” and the budget allows filmmakers to use top-tier equipment, plenty of new releases feel less vibrant and cinematic than comparable films from a few decades ago. (Look no further all of the side-by-side comparisons of the “Devil Wears Prada 2″ trailer and the original film that are currently circulating to see the effect illustrated.) This article seeks to explain why, lamenting that a standardized, inoffensive approach to lighting and production design has become the industry norm. It’s something to know about precisely so that you can avoid it in your own work.