2015 GOTHAM AWARD NOMINEES - THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL LEADS WITH 4

Nominations for the 2015 IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards have been announced! Over a small and select group of categories, Marielle Heller's The Diary of a Teenage Girl has chalked up the most mentions, earning nominations across four, with several films including fellow Best Feature nominees Carol and Tangerine scoring three each. Winners will be announced at the group's awards ceremony on the 30th of November. Check out all the nominations below:

Best Feature
Carol (Todd Haynes, Elizabeth Karlsen, Tessa Ross, Christine Vachon and Stephen Woolley)
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Miranda Bailey, Anne Carey, Bert Hamelinck, Marielle Heller and Madeline Samit)
Heaven Knows What (Sebastian Bear-McClard, Oscar Boyson, Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie)
Spotlight (Steve Golin, Tom McCarthy, Blye Pagan Faust, Nicole Rocklin and Michael Sugar)
Tangerine (Sean Baker, Karrie Cox, Marcus Cox, Darren Dean and Tsou Shih Ching)

Best Actor
Christopher Abbott (James White)
Kevin Corrigan (Results)
Paul Dano (Love & Mercy)
Peter Sarsgaard (Experimenter)
Michael Shannon (99 Homes)

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett (Carol)
Blythe Danner (I'll See You in My Dreams)
Brie Larson (Room)
Bel Powley (The Diary of a Teenage Girl)
Lily Tomlin (Grandma)
Kristen Wiig (Welcome to Me)

Best Screenplay
Noah Baumbach (While We're Young)
Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl)
Michael Alan Lerner and Oren Moverman (Love & Mercy)
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (Spotlight)
Phyllis Nagy (Carol)

Best Documentary
Approaching the Elephant (Jay Craven, Robert Greene and Amanda Rose Wilder)
Cartel Land (Matthew Heineman and Tom Yellin)
Heart of a Dog (Laurie Anderson and Dan Janvey)
Listen to Me Marlon (John Battsek, George Chignell, R. J. Cutler and Stevan Riley)
The Look of Silence (Signe Byrge Sorensen and Joshua Oppenheimer)

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award
Desiree Akhavan (Appropriate Behaviour)
Jonas Carpignano (Mediterranea)
Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl)
John Magary (The Mend)
Josh Mond (James White)

Best Breakthrough Actor
Rory Culkin (Gabriel)
Arielle Holmes (Heaven Knows What)
Lola Kirke (Mistress America)
Kitana Rodriguez (Tangerine)
Mya Taylor (Tangerine)

Gotham Jury Award
Brian d'Arcy James, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery and Stanley Tucci (Spotlight)

Calvin Klein Spotlight on Women Directors 'Live the Dream' Award
Chanelle Aponte Pearson (195 Lewis)
Claire Carre (Embers)
Deb Shoval (AWOL)

Gotham Independent Film Audience Award
Approaching the Elephant
Appropriate Behaviour
Carol
Cartel Land
The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Heart of a Dog
Heaven Knows What
James White
Listen to Me Marlon
The Look of Silence
Mediterranea
The Mend
Spotlight
Tangerine

REVIEW - THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL (MARIELLE HELLER)

The Diary of a Teenage Girl possesses both an ease and an uneasiness, comfort combined with discomfort, a mixture emblematic of the frankness with which this film has been assembled. It's a neat, necessary reflection of the duality of the film's purview as rendered in our objective minds, considering what is right and what is true, what is felt by one person and what is felt by another; Marielle Heller is sympathetic in her presentation of the film's supporting characters as legitimate living entities in this regard, though the film is unapologetically narrow-minded in its own character, as the uncensored thoughts of an unabashed teenage girl. What has been restricted from her as a minor is liberated, as she discovers that human nature rather rejects true liberation, and goes from feeling enslaved to a desire to being enslaved to a new reality. Funny how what we force away from our children will only force itself upon them in time, and to far more damaging effect - that's my interpretation, though, not the film's. The Diary of a Teenage Girl is to each of us what we individually make of it, but the film itself is what its lead individually makes of her own situation: narrow-minded in its portrait of a broad mind. That bestows upon Heller's film an affable, singular outlook, yet the film strangely limits itself as such, and makes fitful connections to the world around it in a manner that seems to betray its otherwise obsessively clear focus. Perhaps this is just another of this film's beguiling dichotomies, its restless refusal to relent to definite distinctions - even so, it hinders an emotionally rich film from becoming equally formally rich.