USC Scripter Awards Win Gives ‘Women Talking’ The Spotlight

Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley won the Best Adapted Screenplay award last night for “Women Talking,” her fourth feature-length film. The award was her second Oscar nomination and first win— she was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay before for her feature-length debut, “Away From Her” in 2008.

Sarah Polley is already working on her next project.

Variety is still celebrating the winners who have graced our covers, spoke on our podcasts and participated in Actors on Actors this season. Revisit our best coverage and interviews with the big winners below. Variety covers: Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”), best actor: Brendan Fraser’s Triumphant Comeback: How Playing a 600-Pound Gay Man in ‘The Whale’ Resurrected His Career Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), best actress: Women Do It Better: Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh on Creating Iconic Characters From Roles Written for Men

As the old saying goes, write what you know and for Women Talking filmmaker Sarah Polley whose up for an Adapted Screenplay Oscar tonight, she’s been through so much of the campaign process that her next movie is set around awards season.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Zaib Shaikh, Canada’s Consul General to Los Angeles, hosted the country’s annual Canada at the Oscars soiree Thursday at his official residence in Hancock Park. The event was the first stop of the night for many Oscar-nominated Canadians including “Women Talking’s” Sarah Polley, Sheila McCarthy and Kate Hallet. Polley was headed to the Macro party. Other attendees were going to the Oscar Wilde Awards or the South Asian Excellence Pre-Oscars Celebration. Also in attendance were “Turning Red’s” Domee Shi, who landed an Oscar for best animated feature, Brendan Fraser and “The Whale” prosthetics makeup designer Adrien Morot.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large It all comes down to this weekend. Variety’s Clayton Davis, Jazz Tangcay, Jenelle Riley and Michael Schneider dissect the Oscar categories one last time and share final predictions on this week’s edition of the award-winning Variety Awards Circuit podcast. It’s a Mega Roundtable of the podcast, as the team goes through every category and offers up their final thoughts. Will “Everything Everywhere All at Once” sweep the night? Or are some surprises in store? Listen along as you fill out your office Oscars pool: Here are some of the potential wins that the team is rooting for:

Julia MacCary editor “Women Talking” writer-director Sarah Polley and novelist Miriam Toews won in the film category, while “Slow Horses” screenwriter Will Smith and novelist Mick Herron won the episodic TV category at the 35th annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards on Saturday. The awards honored the year’s greatest written word adaptations to cinema and episodic series in the first in-person ceremony since 2020. “There’s not another person, another writer, another filmmaker, that I would entrust my book to other than Sarah Polley,” Toews said of Polley who brought “Women Talking” to film, which has been nominated for best picture and adapted screenplay at the Oscars. “Women Talking” illustrates an isolated religious colony where the women uncover a secret about the colony’s men, exposing their abuse.

*WINNER.   ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Written by Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert *WINNER“The Fabelmans,” Written by Steven Spielberg & Tony Kushner “The Menu,” Written by Seth Reiss & Will Tracy “Nope,” Written by Jordan Peele “Tár,” Written by Todd Field   ADAPTED SCREENPLAY “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Screenplay by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole, Story by Ryan Coogler, Based on the Marvel Comics “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Written by Rian Johnson “She Said,” Screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Based on the New York Times Investigation by Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey and Rebecca Corbett and the Book She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey “Top Gun: Maverick,” Screenplay by Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, Story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks, Based on Characters Created by Jim Cash & Jack Epps, Jr.

*WINNER.   ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Written by Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert “The Fabelmans,” Written by Steven Spielberg & Tony Kushner “The Menu,” Written by Seth Reiss & Will Tracy “Nope,” Written by Jordan Peele “Tár,” Written by Todd Field   ADAPTED SCREENPLAY “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Screenplay by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole, Story by Ryan Coogler, Based on the Marvel Comics “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Written by Rian Johnson “She Said,” Screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Based on the New York Times Investigation by Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey and Rebecca Corbett and the Book She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey “Top Gun: Maverick,” Screenplay by Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, Story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks, Based on Characters Created by Jim Cash & Jack Epps, Jr.

Film Independent Spirit Awards were handed out live Saturday night. Continuing a long-standing tradition, the 38th annual ceremony, which honors and celebrates independent filmmakers, took place at the Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, California. This year’s most-nominated films were , which garnered eight total nods and competed in the Best Feature category against , which had seven nods. Other top movies included , and .,, and, meanwhile, led the TV nominations with three each, while the latter three faced off in the Best New Scripted Series category.

Sarah Polley and Miriam Toewswon the USC Libraries’ Scripter Award on Saturday for their adaptation of Orion/MGM’s Women Talking, based on Toews’ novel.

FILM FINALISTS Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale, and Matthew Robbins for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” based on the fairy tale “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi Kazuo Ishiguro for “Living” based on the novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy Rebecca Lenkiewicz for “She Said” based on the nonfiction book “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement” by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey Screenwriter Sarah Polley and novelist Miriam Toews for “Women Talking” *WINNERWITHDRAWN NOMINATION: Peter Craig, Ehren Kruger, Justin Marks, Christopher McQuarrie, and Eric Warren for “Top Gun: Maverick,” based on characters from the 1983 “California” magazine article “Top Guns” by Ehud Yonay     TELEVISION FINALISTS Peter Morgan, for the episode “Couple 31,” from “The Crown,” based on his stage play “The Audience” Taffy Brodesser-Akner for the episode “The Liver,” from “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” based on her book of the same name Will Smith for the episode “Failure’s Contagious,” from “Slow Horses,” based on the novel by Mick Herron *WINNERJ. T.

And that’s a wrap on the 2023 Independent Spirit Awards!

Women dominated in gender-neutral acting categories in the first year of their institution at the Independent Spirit Awards, claiming four statuettes at Saturday’s ceremony.

The 38th Independent Spirit Awards were held today on the famous Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, California, and it was highlighted by the continued award season dominance for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The A24 multiverse comedy-drama took home the top prize for Best Feature, Best Director and Best Screenplay for Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, Best Editing, Best Lead Performance for Michelle Yeoh, Best Supporting Performance for Ke Huy Quan, and Best Breakthrough Performance for Stephanie Hsu.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director The 2023 Independent Spirit Awards are dominated by the Daniels’ “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which leads all films this year with eight nominations. Close behind are Todd Field’s “Tár” with seven noms and Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun” with five. All three movies picked up Oscar nominations this year, with “Everything Everywhere” also leading the Academy Awards pack with a total of 11 nominations. While last year’s Spirit Award winner for best feature, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” did not go on to land an Oscar nomination in the same category, the 2021 winner, Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland,” repeated at the Oscars and took home the best picture prize.

*WINNER.“Bones and All” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” “Our Father, the Devil” “Tár” “Women Talking”   “Aftersun” “Emily the Criminal” “The Inspection” “Murina” “Palm Trees and Power Lines”    Todd Field, “Tár”Kogonada, “After Yang”Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Sarah Polley, “Women Talking”Halina Reijn, “Bodies Bodies Bodies”   Lena Dunham, “Catherine Called Birdy” Todd Field, “Tár” Kogonada, “After Yang” Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” Sarah Polley, “Women Talking”   Joel Kim Booster, “Fire Island” Jamie Dack, Audrey Findlay, Story by Jamie Dack, “Palm Trees and Power Lines” K.D. Dávila, “Emergency” Sarah DeLappe, Story by Kristen Roupenian, “Bodies Bodies Bodies”John Patton Ford, “Emily the Criminal”   Cate Blanchett, “Tár” Dale Dickey, “A Love Song” Mia Goth, “Pearl” Regina Hall, “Honk for Jesus.

We are coming down the home stretch of the 2022-2023 award season, with the Oscars eight days away. The 38th Independent Spirit Awards is the last big award show left before we find out who will become our new batch of Academy Award winners.

The 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards kick off Saturday at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT on the beach at the Santa Monica Pier. The ceremony, hosted by Hasan Minhaj, will be livestreamed on Film Independent’s YouTube channel and Twitter feed as well as on IMDb’s YouTube channel.

Organizers of the annual ReFrame Report said Wednesday that 29 of the 100 most popular films of 2022 met the criteria to be awarded a ReFrame Stamp for gender-balanced productions, a list that includes Oscar Best Picture nominees like Sarah Polley’s Women Talking and The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once, as well as Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King and Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.