Compiled annually by Mike Ward
STATS ARE FUN! — SFCS 2023 AWARDS UPDATE
Past Lives is the first film in SFCS history to have its only win come in the Best Picture category.
Celine Song is the first woman director to win the SFCS Best Picture award with her debut film. Song joins Jordan Peele as the only directors to win Best Picture with their debut films.
Past Lives is the first film to open the Seattle International Film Festival and go on to win Best Picture in SFCS. Of all the gala films since 2016, Past Lives joins The Farewell (2019 Closing Night) and Navalny (2022 Opening Night) as SIFF gala films to earn SFCS nominations.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has earned distinction of being the first animated film to earn a Best Picture nomination in SFCS history.
Everything Everywhere All At Once remains the record holder for most SFCS nominations in a single year with 14 in 2022.
Every Best Picture winner has earned a nomination in Best Film Editing. Three have won both categories – Moonlight (2016), Nomadland (2020), and Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).
Best Picture and Best Director winners have now matched in six of eight years, with the only difference being the Get Out (Picture)/Dunkirk (Director) split in 2017 and Past Lives (Picture)/Killers of the Flower Moon (Director) in 2023.
With Poor Things winning 1 award from a possible 11 nominations and Killers of the Flower Moon winning 2 awards from a possible 11 nominations, the most nominated film struggles significantly to convert nominations into wins, with one major exception (2016’s Moonlight):
- Moonlight (2016) (6 wins with 10 nominations)
- La La Land (2016) (0 wins with 10 nominations)
- Blade Runner 2049 (2017) (2 wins with 8 nominations)
- The Favourite (2018) (2 wins with 11 nominations)
- The Irishman (2019) (0 wins with 10 nominations)
- Minari (2020) (3 wins with 8 nominations)
- The Power of the Dog (2021) (2 wins with 11 nominations)
- Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) (4 wins with 14 nominations)
- Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) (2 wins with 11 nominations)
- Poor Things (2023) (1 win with 11 nominations)
As a result, the most nominated film wins an SFCS Award 21% of the time, down from 23% one year ago.
A24 remains the only studio to earn a Best Picture nomination each year since 2016.
- Moonlight, The Witch (2016)
- The Disaster Artist, The Florida Project, Lady Bird (2017)
- First Reformed (2018)
- The Farewell, The Lighthouse, Uncut Gems (2019)
- First Cow, Minari (2020)
- The Green Knight (2021)
- Aftersun, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
- Past Lives, The Zone of Interest (2023)
A24 has become the first studio to repeat with a Best Picture win and can now claim three Best Picture winners (Moonlight, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Past Lives).
With one win each for Past Lives and Showing Up, A24 has amassed 30 awards overall in SFCS history, including five Youth Performance wins (The Witch, The Florida Project, Eighth Grade, Minari, and Aftersun) and one Excellence in Pacific Northwest Filmmaking award (Showing Up).
This is the 6th year in a row and 7th year overall that a film(s) not predominantly in the English language has/have been nominated for Best Picture.
- Elle, The Handmaiden (2016)
- Roma (2018)
- Parasite, The Farewell (2019)
- Minari (2020)
- Drive My Car, Titane (2021)
- Decision to Leave (2022)
- The Zone of Interest (2023)
Godzilla (Godzilla Minus One) becomes the second non-human character to win the Villain of the Year Award, following The Red Dress (In Fabric) in 2019.
Godzilla (Godzilla Minus One) and M3GAN* (M3GAN) also join Black Philip (The Witch), STEM (Upgrade), The Red Dress (In Fabric), and Jean Jacket (Nope) as non-human nominees in the Villain of the Year category.
*-M3GAN was performed and voiced by human actors (Amie Donald and Jenna Davis, respectively) but the character is that of a non-human, AI robot.
Celine Song (Past Lives) is the fourth woman director to earn a Best Director nomination for her debut film, joining Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) and Charlotte Wells (Aftersun) with this distinction.
Gerwig holds the distinction of having each of her three directed films (Lady Bird, Little Women, Barbie) earn a Best Director nomination.
Milo Machado Graner’s win in the Best Youth Performance category, for Anatomy of a Fall, makes him the second male recipient of the award, joining Alan S. Kim (Minari). Both performances, by Machado Graner and Kim, are in French and Korean, respectively.
With nominations in Best International Film and Best Youth Performance (Sōya Kurokawa) for the film Monster, this is the second time that a film by Hirokazu Kore-eda has earned its nominations in those two categories. In 2018, the film was Shoplifters, with Kairi Jō that year’s Youth Performance nominee.
Sandra Hüller becomes the first actor to earn a nomination in the Lead and Supporting categories in the same year (Anatomy of a Fall – Actress in a Leading Role; The Zone of Interest – Actress in a Supporting Role)
Kôji Yakusho’s nomination for Perfect Days makes him the third nominee in the Actor in a Leading Role category to be nominated from a film not predominantly in the English Language. Unlike previous nominees Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory) and Steven Yeun (Minari), he is the first lone nominee for his film.
Godzilla Minus One becomes the first film not predominantly in the English Language to win Best Visual Effects. The film joins RRR as the only international films to earn Visual Effects nominations.
Best International Film has had at least one woman nominee in seven of eight years, continuing with this year’s nomination of Anatomy of a Fall, directed by Justine Triet. Julia Ducournau remains the only woman to win the award, for Raw, in 2017.
With the win this year for Past Lives, the Best Picture winner has still not matched a win in the categories of Action Choreography, Costume Design, Original Score, Production Design, Visual Effects, Youth Performance, or Villain of the Year.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse becomes the first sequel to join its predecessor in winning Best Animated Feature. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won Best Animated Feature in 2018.
John Wick: Chapter 4 joins John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum as the first two-time Action Choreography winner, in terms of wins within a franchise film series. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum was also the category’s inaugural winner in 2019.
Ava Duvernay’s 13th, in 2016, remains the only Documentary Feature to earn a Best Picture nomination.
For the first time in SFCS history, two international films not predominantly in the English Language, The Boy and the Heron and Suzume, earned nominations in the Best Animated Feature category.
Godzilla Minus One is the first franchise film to win Best International Film, existing as the 37th Godzilla feature and fifth entry in the recent Reiwa era of Godzilla films.
Takashi Yamazaki is the first director nominated in the Best Visual Effects category.
Showing Up is the first narrative film to win the Excellence in Pacific Northwest Filmmaking Award. Last year, in its inaugural year, the documentary Sweetheart Deal received the award.
With their nominations for Best Documentary Feature, Even Hell Has Its Heroes and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie have become the fourth and fifth consecutive Best Documentary Feature nominees to not receive a theatrical release. This trend stretches out to four consecutive years, following the 2020 winner, The History of the Seattle Mariners: Supercut Edition, 2021 nominee, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, and 2022 nominee, Sweetheart Deal, with this unique distinction.
Even Hell Has Its Heroes becomes the second film to score multiple nominations including the Excellence in Pacific Northwest Filmmaking Award. Both Even Hell Has Its Heroes and last year’s winner, Sweetheart Deal, saw their second nominations come in the Documentary Feature category.
With his nomination for Menus-Plaisirs – Los Troisgros in the Best Documentary Feature category, Frederick Wiseman extends his record as the oldest SFCS nominee in history at 94 years, 2 days old (as of the January 3, 2024 awards announcement).
With Madeleine Gavin’s nomination for Beyond Utopia, at least one woman director has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature each year.
With her nomination for Best Director, Celine Song makes 2023 the fifth consecutive year a filmmaker of Asian descent has earned a Best Director nomination. She joins Bong Joon-ho (2019, Parasite), Chloé Zhao (2020, Nomadland), Lee Isaac Chung (2020, Minari), Ryūsuke Hamaguchi (2021, Drive My Car) and Daniel Kwan (2022, Everything Everywhere All At Once) with this honor.
Though Song did not win Best Director, her film, Past Lives, joins Parasite, Nomadland, Drive My Car, and Everything Everywhere All At Once as Best Picture winners among that group.
The Holdovers becomes the sixth original screenplay in eight years to win Best Screenplay. Only Moonlight (2016) and Drive My Car (2022) have won the category as adapted works.
2023 is the first year where all nominees in the Best Youth Performance are in films with additional nominations outside of the Youth Performance category.
Only one director has been nominated for a film missing a Best Picture nomination (Steve McQueen, Small Axe: Lovers Rock in 2020), and only one film has ever received its lone nomination in the Best Picture category (Hamilton in 2020).
With his nomination for Oppenheimer in the Best Visual Effects category, Scott R. Fisher extends his record as the most nominated individual in SFCS history. He has now earned seven overall nominations and two wins (Ad Astra, Tenet) – shared with others in the Visual Effects category.
With her nomination for Best Costume Design for Barbie, Jacqueline Durran is the most nominated woman in SFCS history, landing her sixth nomination. Barbie earns Durran her first SFCS award.
Dan Sudick, a five-time nominee in the Visual Effects category, is joined by Nathan Crowley (Wonka), now a five-time nominee in the Production Design category, as the most nominated individuals in SFCS history to not win an award.
With his nomination for Oppenheimer, and their nomination for The Zone of Interest, respectively, Ludwig Göransson and Mica Levi join Justin Hurwitz as the most nominated composers in SFCS history with three nominations each.