2023 Gold Digger Mid-Year Awards Winners

After a month of voting and deliberating, we’re thrilled to announced that our panel of over forty critics and cinephile have selected Celine Song’s Past Lives, recently available to rent or buy on VOD, as the Best Feature Film for the 2023 Gold Diggers Mid-Year Awards.  The tender romantic drama, entered around Nora, a Korean-American immigrant, and her lifelong romantic pulls between her husband Arthur and Jung her childhood crush, took home four prizes. This includes Best Feature Film, Best Directorial Debut, Best Screenplay and the Best Leading Actor prize for Teo Yoo for his performance as Jung.

When selecting our malleable voting body, The Gold Diggers prides itself with grouping together a subset of distinct figures and voices within the world of film criticism. Meaning, our voters are easily dividing themselves into factions rallying around individual films. Not to toot our own horn, but we find it refreshing that we have a Feature Film Roster that ranges from the ultraviolence of Chad Stahlinksi’s John Wick Chapter 4 to the somnolescence of Albert Serra’s Queer Cold War thriller Pacifiction. In the same respect, Past Lives squeeze it’s victory in dead heat competition with a number of films including Pacifiction.

Another film in that dead heat competition was the evening’s big winner Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. Despite losing the top prize, Asteroid City took home 6 prizes including sweeping most of the below the line tech categories. Its wins include Best Director for Wes Anderson, Best Ensemble Cast, Best Cinematography for Robert D. Yoemen and Best Costume Design for Milena Canonero.  

Elsewhere, our international contingent of voters rallied around Portuguese director Joao Pedro Rogrigues’ gay firefighters fantasia musical Will-o’-the-Wisp winning our Best Use of Music Prize, the documentarian duo Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica not only took home the Non-Fiction Film but also tied John Wick Chapter 4, for the Sound Mixing prize and Rebecca Zlotowski’s sexy drama Other People’s Children winning the Best Leading Actress prize for French actress Virginie Efira. Efire portrays Rachel, a forty-something middle school teacher, whose relationship with a single father upends her view on womanhood and motherhood. Both of our supporting prizes went to Glenn Howerton fiery show stopping performance as Canadian entrepreneur Jim Balsillie in Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry and Rachel McAdams’s soulful melancholic performance as Barbara Simon, a mother trying to find her voice and passion as her daughter Margaret enters middle school in Kelly Fremon Craig’s adaptation of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

The full list of winners is as follows:

 Best Feature Film: Past Lives

Best Directing:  Wes Anderson, Asteroid City

Best Film Not In the English Language: Joyland (Pakistan/USA)

Best Animated Film:  Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best Non-Fiction Film: De Humani Corporis Fabrica

Best Directorial Debut:  Past Lives

Best Ensemble Film:  Asteroid City

Best Leading Actress:  Virginie Efira, Other People’s Children

Best Leading Actor: Teo Yoo, Past Lives

Best Supporting Actress:  Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’ Me, Margaret.

Best Supporting Actor: Glenn Howerton, BlackBerry

Best Acting Newcomer:  Andrew Barth Feldman, No Hard Feelings

Best Screenplay: Celine Song, Past Lives

Best Cinematography: Robert D. Yoemen, Asteroid City

Best Editing:  Daniel Garber, How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Best Production Design:  Asteroid City

Best Costume Design: Milena Canoreno, Asteroid City

Best Makeup & Hair Styling:  Asteroid City

Best Visual Effects: Mike Laster, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best Sound Mixing: TIE: De humani corporis fabrica & John Wick: Chapter 4

Best Sound Editing: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best Original Score: Daniel Pemberton, Across the Spider-Verse

Best Use of Music: Will-o’-the-Wisp

Winner Summary:

Per Film:

Asteroid City – 6

Past Lives – 4

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – 4

De humani corporis fabrica – 2

John Wick Chapter 4 – 2

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. --- 1

BlackBerry – 1

How to Blow Up a Pipeline -- 1

Joyland  -- 1

No Hard Feelings – 1

Other People’s Children – 1

Will-O’-The-Wisp – 1

Per Studio:

Focus Features --  6

Columbia Pictures  -- 5

A24 – 4

Grasshopper Film – 2

Lionsgate – 3

IFC Films  -- 1

Music Box Films – 1

Neon – 1

Oscilloscope  -- 1

Strand Releasing – 1