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Montreal filmmaker's Up the Yangtze nominated for Spirit Award

03.12.2008 17:23 Arts - Source: cbc.ca

Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham, left) and Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) smuggle illegal immigrants across the Canada-U.S. border in Frozen River. (Jory Sutton/Frozen River Productions/Sony Pictures Classics)

Up the Yangtze, Montreal filmmaker Yung Chang's feature-length documentary about the changes in China with the building of the Three Gorges Dam, has earned a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award.

It is one of five films in the running for best documentary at the awards, the U.S.'s best-known awards for independent movies.

The other films are:

The Betrayal, directed by Ellen Kuras & Thavisouk Phrasavath.
Encounters at the End of the World, by Werner Herzog.
Man on Wire, by James Marsh.
The Order of Myths, by Margaret Brown.

Up the Yangtze, produced by EyeSteelFilm and the National Film Board, won the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as awards at the San Francisco and Vancouver film festivals.

It follows the fate of a young girl who takes a job aboard a luxury cruise ship because her poor peasant family is left landless by the flooding of the river.

The Spirit Awards will be given out Feb. 21 in Los Angeles, just ahead of the Academy Awards. A full slate of nominations was released Tuesday by non-profit Film Independent in L.A.

Frozen River, a portrait of two single mothers who make a little extra cash by smuggling across the Canadian border, is one five feature films that earned a nomination for best picture.

Frozen River, set on a Mohawk reservation on the border between Quebec and New York, earned six nominations.

Actress Melissa Leo has a nomination for best actress, and the film is also up for best picture and best director.

Ballast, Rachel Getting Married get 6 nods each

Ballast, a drama about survival in the Mississippi Delta, and Rachel Getting Married, the family drama with a breakout performance by Anne Hathaway, also earned six nominations each, including best picture.

The other films nominated for best feature are Wendy and Lucy, about a woman living on the economic fringes, and The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke as a broken-down athlete.

Hathaway's best actress nomination is for Rachel Getting Married, with castmates Rosemarie De Witt and Debra Winger getting best supporting actress nominations.

Also competing for best actress are Tarra Riggs from Ballast, Summer Bishil from Towelhead, and Michelle Williams from Wendy and Lucy.

The actors in the best male lead category are:

Javier Bardem, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor.
Sean Penn, Milk.
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker.
Rourke, The Wrestler.

In the best foreign film category, the contenders are:

Laurent Cantet, The Class, France.
Matteo Garrone, Gomorra, Italy.
Steve McQueen, Hunger, U.K./Ireland.
Abdellatif Kechiche, Secret of the Grain, France.
Carols Reygadas, Silent Light, Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany.

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FEATURE: The film Frozen River explores criminal intrigue at the Canada-U.S. border FEATURE: A Canadian doc sizes up China's Three Gorges Dam FEATURE: Rachel Getting Married puts some spice into a gooey genre

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