Gotham Awards 2023 | ‘Past Lives,’ Lily Gladstone win, while Robert De Niro says his speech was edited

Past Lives wins Best Feature at Gotham Awards. Robert De Niro claims his speech was edited without his permission, while Lily Gladstone won Best Lead Performance for The Unknown Country. Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers was the lead nominee with four nods, but went home without a trophy. Kaouther Ben Hania's Four Daughters won Best Documentary. Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck, George C. Wolfe, and Michael Mann received tribute awards

Celine Song’s wistful romance Past Lives earned top honours at the Gotham Awards on Monday evening at an award-season kickoff where the night’s biggest drama came in a political speech by Robert De Niro that the actor claimed had been edited without his permission.

Past Lives, a breakout at the Sundance Film Festival in January and an arthouse hit in June for A24, may be poised to be an Oscar sleeper this year after winning best feature film at the Gothams. Affection is strong for Song’s directorial debut, starring Greta Lee as a woman born in Seoul who, after marrying an American (John Magaro), reconnects with a childhood friend from South Korea (Teo Yoo).

“This is the first film I’ve ever made and a very personal film about an extraordinary feeling I had in an ordinary bar in the East Village, not too many blocks away from here,” said Song, accepting the award. “As this film has been shared with the world, it has taught me — and taught us — that you’re never alone in that extraordinary feeling.”

Past Lives was expected to win, but the ceremony went off-script when De Niro, co-star in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, took the podium to present a tribute award to the film. While giving his remarks, De Niro noticed a section had been omitted from the teleprompter. After attempting to scroll back through, he completed his speech before returning to read from his phone.

“The beginning of my speech was edited, cut out,” De Niro said. “I didn’t know about it.”

De Niro, known for his fiery rhetoric against former President Donald Trump, then expanded on what he called America’s “post-truth society” and chided Hollywood — specifically John Wayne — for earlier depictions of Native Americans.

“The former president lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office, and he’s keeping up the pace with his current campaign of retribution,” De Niro said. “With all of his lies, he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows his disrespect for example using Pocahontas as a slur.”