Victory for Precious at indie film awards gala

Published on Saturday 6 March 2010 19:20

THE drama Precious has won five prizes at the Independent Spirit Awards, including best picture and trophies for the stars, Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique, and director Lee Daniels.

At the Oscars curtain-raiser, Sidibe won best actress for playing an illiterate teenager pulling herself out of an abyss of neglect and abuse. Mo'Nique earned the supporting-actress honour as the girl's loathsome mother.

Jeff Bridges won best actor for the country-music tale Crazy Heart and Woody Harrelson won supporting actor for the war-on-terror drama The Messenger.

All four actors are up for the same honours at tonight's Academy Awards. Bridges and Mo'Nique are front-runners and Sidibe was nominated for her screen debut.

Though she has dominated her category at earlier film honours, Mo'Nique said backstage she had not prepared a speech for the Oscars, "because I think the universe would say, 'You have a lot of nerve'."

Precious swept every category for which it was nominated, including best screenplay by a first-time writer for Geoffrey Fletcher. He and director Daniels are nominated at the Oscars, where Precious is a best-picture contender.

Accepting the award, Daniels joked, "Kathryn Bigelow's not here tonight. I am," referring to the maker of The Hurt Locker, the favourite to win best director at the Oscars.

Another best-picture Oscar nominee, Lone Scherfig's British drama An Education, was chosen as best foreign film.

Bridges, favourite for best actor at the Oscars for his role as a boozy country star trying to turn his life around, performed one of the songs from Crazy Heart at the Spirit Awards in Los Angeles. Crazy Heart also won for best debut film for first-time director Scott Cooper.

Presented by the cinema group Film Independent, the Spirit Awards honour movies that cost less than $20 million (13m) to make, with a significant part of their budget originating outside the Hollywood studio system.