Oscar season is heating up in NYC, with the announcement that three possible frontrunners will receive top honors at the 2022 Museum of the Moving Image Gala to held at the Sumner M. Redstone Theater in Astoria, Queens onsite at MoMI’s main floor.
“It is a great honor to recognize Sarah Polley, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, and Laura Poitras as our 2022 Moving Image Award honorees,” said Carl Goodman, MoMI’s Executive Director. “These exceptional artists, whose work ranges from narrative directing to screenwriting to nonfiction filmmaking, highlight the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of the moving image. We eagerly anticipate welcoming them, along with our supporters, to the Museum on December 1, to celebrate their remarkable achievements.”
Polley’s latest narrative film Women Talking has had Oscar pundits talking since its festival premieres in Telluride and Toronto, with buzz surrounding actors Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw and Polley herself as writer-director, adapting Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel about a group of women who meet to discuss abuse in a small religious colony.
Laura Poitras is a past Oscar winner, for her 2014 documentary about whistleblower Edward Snowden, and is heavily favored to enter the doc race again for this year’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, centered on photographer Nan Goldin’s attempt to hold Purdue Pharma responsible for the massive rise in opioid deaths (similarly explored in the Hulu series Dopesick last year).
Despite plaudits and awards aplenty for his novels and stories, Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro has only written a handful of film scripts, and his latest for the Bill Nighy-starring Living might be his ticket to Hollywood’s big night. His adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru follows an aging bureaucrat (Nighy) grappling with the possibility of terminal illness and Ishiguro’s screenplay (along with Nighy’s impressive performance) have had Oscar buzz this year as well.
