Precious sparkles at 25th Indie Spirit Awards

The inner city drama won best film, best director for Lee Daniels and both lead and supporting female acting prizes for Gabourey Sidibe and Oscar favourite Mo’Nique (pictured), respectively. Geoffrey Fletcher rounded out the quintet with the best first screenplay award.

Jeff Bridges, the frontrunner for Sunday’s Academy Award, won best actor for Crazy Heart while Woody Harrelson won best supporting actor for the widely admired drama The Messenger.

Crazy Heart also earned the best first feature for director Scott Cooper, who produced alongside Robert Duvall, Rob Carliner, Judy Cairo and T-Bone Burnett. Best screenplay went to Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber for 500 Days Of Summer.

Lone Scherfig collected the best foreign language award for An Education, and Sacha Gervasi’s Anvil! The Story Of Anvil took the documentary prize.

Roger Deakins won the cinematography prize for his work on the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man.

The Sundance 2009 hit Humpday took home the John Cassavetes Award for best feature made for under $500,000. The prize is awarded to a film’s writer, director and producer – in this case multihyphenate Lynn Shelton.

The Robert Altman Award presented to one film’s director, casting director, and its ensemble cast went to A Serious Man, directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen and the key cast of Richard Kind, Sari Lennick, Jessica McManus, Michael Stuhlbarg and Aaron Wolff. Ellen Che

The Piaget Producers Award went to Karen Chien for The Exploding Girl and Santa Mesa. The Someone To Watch Award went to Kyle Patrick Alvarez for directing Easier With Practice, and the Truer Than Fiction Award was presented to Bill Ross and Turner Ross for 45365.