Anora sweeps as Mikey Madison beats Demi Moore while Baby Reindeer wins big at Independent Spirit Awards 2025

The 40th Independent Spirit Awards signaled a major awards-season upset when Anora won multiple top awards, including best feature and best director, and star Mikey Madison took home the award for best lead performance.

The gender-neutral category had pitched her against a bevy of acclaimed performers, including the current Oscars favorite Demi Moore for her satirical horror-comedy The Substance.

But Demi’s odds at the upcoming Academy Awards were thrown into question by the upstart win by Mikey, who stars in Anora as the title character, a sex worker who dreams of leaving her career as an adult dancer behind after she gets hitched to the son of a Russian oligarch after their professional relationship turns romantic.

But the film takes a turn after henchmen working for her new husband’s influential parents do everything in their power to annul the marriage.

Director Sean Baker was also on hand to accept the top prize of the night and his individual award for helming the acclaimed movie. 

Baby Reindeer was one of the biggest winners in the TV categories. It swept the acting categories with series creator and star Richard Gadd winning best lead performance, while Nava Mau won in the supporting category and Jessica Gunning won the breakout performance award.

SNL alumna Aidy Bryant hosted the star-studded ceremony, which was held in Santa Monica, California, for the second year in a row.  

The Indie Spirits have gender-neutral acting categories, unlike the Oscars, Emmys or Golden Globes.

The ceremony celebrates film and television talent with both standard and unique categories like Best First Screenplay and the John Cassavetes Award (for best feature under $1 million). 

Mikey looked misty-eyed as she made her acceptance speech, though she managed to keep it together while thanking her costars and her director, whom she joked was not just a great director and friend, but also an ‘incredible Chihuahua owner.’

The win was a shocking upset over awards-season favorite Demi Moore, though the gender-neutral nature of the category may have shifted the dynamic.

But Demi was seen getting along with Mikey earlier in the evening when they had a cute chat while Demi held her adorable fun-size dog Pilaf. 

Presenters at the Independent Spirit awards included Michelle Yeoh, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Kathryn Hahn, Melanie Lynskey, Natasha Lyonne, Questlove, Edgar Ramirez, Hunter Schafer and more.

In Sean Baker’s best director acceptance speech, he warned that independent cinema is ‘struggling more than ever’ while defending its important role in the film ecosystem. 

He also bemoaned how poorly compensated independent film workers are despite helping to create zeitgeist-defining movies. 

‘If you’re a writer or director trying to break in right now, you’ll make a film for free, take the DGA minimum and divide it by three,’ he said of the conditions many filmmakers are willing to endure.

Baker also admitted that even successful films paid so little that he could have never been a filmmaker if he had had children.

‘The system has to be changed, it’s completely unsustainable,’ he continued with increased ferocity. ‘We shouldn’t be barely getting by.’

Anora was made for just $6 million — a shockingly paltry sum by Hollywood standards — but it has already grossed $37.4 million, earning back several times its budget and becoming his highest-grossing film to date. 

The film, which was honored with the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, received six nominations at the upcoming Academy Awards.

The crowd let out a cheer and Baker jumped to his feet when Anora was announced for the final award of the night, while his fellow producers Alex Coco and Samantha Quan — who is also his wife — joined him and delivered the majority of the final acceptance speech of the night.

Earlier, the ceremony solidified Jesse Eisenberg’s awards-season campaign with his win for best screenplay.

The 41-year-old actor, writer and director was honored for his dramedy A Real Pain, which he stars in with Kieran Culkin.

Culkin was also the winner of the best supporting actor category, though he wasn’t able to attend the ceremony. 

Baby Reindeer also snatched up multiple awards, including best breakthrough performance in a new scripted series award for Jessica Gunning.

The actress earned stellar praise for playing the stalker of series creator and star Richard Gadd, won the award.

In his acceptance speech, Jesse said he had already praised the other screenwriters and directors he has been competing against at multiple awards ceremonies in panels throughout the season.

He joked that the film’s distributor, Searchlight Pictures, had ‘treated the film like it was Gladiator II.’ 

‘Unfortunately, the returns were not similar,’ he joked. 

Jesse also praised his producers, including his Zombieland costar–turned–producer Emma Stone, whom he said would send him screenshots of lines of essay and humor pieces he had written through the years whenever she wanted to encourage him. 

‘I think it’s so important that somebody like her who is so unbelievably successful in mainstream movies looks for people like me and [Problemista director and star] Julio [Torres] and [I Saw the TV Glow director] Jane [Schoenbrun] to try and produce with all the goodwill she’s amassed so rightly and deservedly over the years,’ he gushed. 

Emma seemed to be in tears as he praised her, and she waved him off out of embarrassment.

In Jessica Gunning’s acceptance speech, she noted that she had been acting for 17 years, but it wasn’t until Baby Reindeer that she got her true breakthrough role.

Licorice Pizza star and Haim member Alana Haim and Euphoria star Hunter Schafer were next up to present the award for best supporting performance in a new scripted series.

The honor went to one of Baby Reindeer multiple breakout stars, Nava Mau.

The transgender actress recalled her early work in independent short films and marveled at how far she had come.

She also signaled her hope that the film industry would increasingly focus on the labor of its workers as it moves forward.

Richard Gadd, who created Baby Reindeer and starred in the lead role, went on to win the top television acting prize of the night. 

He said he wrote a speech for the night but joked that Sean Baker had stolen it with his soaring acceptance speech for best director. 

He also joked that he didn’t think his chances were very good after The Penguin came on the scene and started snatching up awards. 

The ceremony kicked off by honoring the best breakthrough performance in a feature film.

Maisy Stella was the first winner of the evening for her romantic dramedy My Old Ass, which costarred Aubrey Plaza as a future version of herself trying to guide her toward a better future.

Questlove presented another early award for best documentary feature, which went to the critically lauded film No Other Land.

The documentary was directed by a quartet of Palestinian–Israeli collective of four filmmakers.

The show switched things up with the next award for best first feature, which was presented by Hard Truths star Marianne Jean-Baptiste. 

The award went to Dìdi, and its director, Sean Wang, accepted and noted that one of the film’s stars, Twin Peaks actress and filmmaker Joan Chen, was previously nominated in the same category for her 2000 directorial effort Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl. 

Wang was back at the podium later in the evening when he won the award for best first screenplay. 

The Independent Spirit Awards celebrated another first feature with the John Cassavetes Award, which is only for debuts that cost under $1 million. 

Presenters Patti LuPone and Natasha Lyonne said they were renaming the award for Cassavetes’ late wife, the iconic actress Gena Rowlands, who died on August 14, 2024, at the age of 94.

Rowlands starred in numerous films, but she was best known for her work acting in several of Cassavetes’ movies, including Faces, A Woman Under The Influence and Opening Night. 

However, it wasn’t clear if the name change was official or just a sweet tribute to a fallen idol by Patti and Natasha. 

After their touching speech, they announced that the winner was Girls Will Be Girls.

The Indian–French coproduction focuses on a teenage girl in a boarding school located in the Himalayan foothills who becomes enamored of a male student, even as her relationship with her overprotective mother sours.

The award for best ensemble cast in a new scripted series went to Natasha Rothwell and her costars on her series How To Die Alone.

Carrie Coon and Walton Goggins from The White Lotus season three presented the award for the series, which was canceled after one season.

Although Baby Reindeer won all of the individual television acting awards, the top prize for the medium, best new scripted series, went to the critically acclaimed historical drama Shōgun. 

It was followed up by the award for best new non-scripted or documentary series, which went to Hollywood Black.

The award for best cinematography went to Nickel Boys and its cinematographer Jomo Fray. 

Problemista director and star Julio Torres had a hilarious, halting introductionto the best editing award after he joked that the teleprompter had broken. Hansjörg Weißbrich ultimately won for September 5.

This Spirit Awards considered films with budgets from $112,000 to $28 million this year.

The budgetary restrictions applied to film nominations did not extend to television series recognized by the Spirit Awards, exemplified by Shōgun, a large-scale historical epic that garnered five nominations, including Best New Scripted Series.

It ultimately won only the top prize for new scripted series, while Baby Reindeer swept in the individual acting categories.

Early buzz suggested that English Teacher star Brian Jordan Alvarez was in the running for the award, but his momentum came to a screeching halt after he was accused of sexual assault by his former collaborator Jon Ebeling two months prior.

Ebeling alleged that Alvarez sexually assaulted him while they worked together on the digital series The Gay And Wondrous Life Of Caleb Gallo, which aired on YouTube in 2016.

They starred alongside Stephanie Koenig, who also costars with Alvarez in The English Teacher.

Alvarez has denied the allegations. 

Another losing figure currently embroiled in a controversy is The Apprentice director Ali Abbasi, who was nominated for the Best Director award.

Abbasi has been accused of groping an A-list star at a Golden Globes afterparty last month, leading to a split from his high-profile talent representatives at CAA and Entertainment360.

Though he admitted to an ‘over-familiar gesture’ — a slap on the rear of a male star — he claimed it was purely friendly and not at all sexual.

Abbasi also denied that he was dropped by his representatives and said he had parted ways as part of a previously planned career move.

While the Oscars and Spirit Awards sometimes diverge in their selections, as evidenced by last year’s differing top film choices, they have also overlapped in prior years, with films like Everything Everywhere All at Once, Nomadland, and Moonlight winning their top film prizes. 

‘What I love about the Spirit Awards is I feel like they have a looseness and a bit more personality, and I think we’re just trying to lean into that,’ Bryant told Entertainment Weekly about the show.

‘I think the Spirits are going to be extremely fun. I feel like this has been such an intense year that I really hope that this is just a place where people can blow off some steam and we can celebrate some really great small movies.’

The 40th Film Independent Spirit Awards are available to stream on the IMDb and Film Independent YouTube and X channels.