This year, the Spirit Awards to provide Oscar counterpoint

“Birdman” and “12 Years a Slave” won both the Spirit Award and the Oscar best picture trophies during the past two years, as did “The Artist” four years ago.

Spotlight, featuring Mark Ruffalo, has already been chosen by the Spirits for this year’s Robert Altman Award, which honours a film’s ensemble cast.

The awards show, created in 1984 to recognize the achievements of independent filmmakers, is the last film awards show before the Oscars unfold Sunday.

The acting winners at Saturday’s Spirit awards provided a stark contrast to the Academy Award’s all-white list of acting nominees. It’s nice to finally see some love for Beasts of no Nation, Cary Fukunaga himself still hasn’t won a single award. Mya Taylor, recognised for her role in indie-movie Tangerine, told the audience as she collected her Best Supporting Female award, “There is transgender talent”. “You better get out there and put them in your movie”.

The 15-year-old, “Beasts of No Nation actor” beat fellow actors, Ben Mendelsohn (Mississippi Grind), Christopher Abbott (James White), Jason Segel (The End of the Tour
) and Koudous Seihon (Mediterranea) for the honor to pick the coveteous award. Emma Donoghue, the novelist-turned-screenwriter, also won for best adapted screenplay for the film. This year’s awards ceremony was a blast, thanks to Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon and Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjiani, who hosted the show. And the documentary front-runner, the Indonesian genocide film “Look of Silence” won best documentary.

The foreign language film “Son of Saul” took best global film. But McCarthy took the opportunity to celebrate the film’s distinction as an independent film, made by indie distributor Open Road.

The annual Spirit Awards, which are held in a tent on Southern California’s Santa Monica Beach the day before Hollywood’s glamorous Oscars ceremony, offer a laid-back setting for nominees and guests to let their hair down.

Film Independent President Josh Welsh hailed the awards for “talent on-screen and talent on-camera look(ing) somewhat like the world we actually live in”.

Collecting the award, she said: “I have had a long journey through 2015 because I had come from nearly nothing and then got this role and this movie, and my life just did a total 360”.