Film Independent’s Spirit Awards are a recognition of the year’s best small budget, independently-financed films (though this last part has decreased over the years with the infusion of niche specialty houses from major studios making movies for little money). This is traditionally the final precursor to announce before the Oscars and will be doing so Friday evening. Here are our predictions for those awards.

Spirit Awards

Best Feature

Amreeka
(500) Days of Summer (Peter)
The Last Station
Precious (Wesley, Tripp)
Sin Nombre

Best Director

Ethan Coen, Joel Coen – A Serious Man
Lee Daniels – Precious (Wesley, Tripp)
Cary Joji Fukunaga – Sin Nombre (Peter)
James Gray – Two Lovers
Michael Hoffman – The Last Station

Best First Feature

Crazy Heart
Easier with Practice
The Messenger (Wesley, Peter)
Paranormal Activity
A Single Man (Tripp)

John Cassavetes Award

Big Fan
Humpday (Tripp, Peter)
The New Year Parade
Treeless Mountain (Wesley)
Zero Bridge

Best Screenplay

Adventureland
(500) Days of Summer (Wesley, Peter, Tripp)
The Messenger
The Last Station
The Vicious Kind

Best First Screenplay

Amreeka
Cold Souls
Crazy Heart
Precious (Tripp)
A Single Man (Wesley, Peter)

Best Female Lead

Maria Bello – Downloading Nancy
Nisreen Faour – Amreeka
Helen Mirren – The Last Station
Gwyneth Paltrow – Two Lovers
Gabourey Sidibe – Precious (Wesley, Peter, Tripp)

Best Male Lead

Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart (Wesley, Peter, Tripp)
Colin Firth – A Single Man
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – (500) Days of Summer
Souleymane Sy Savane – Goodbye Solo
Adam Scott – The Vicious Kind

Best Supporting Female

Dina Korzun – Cold Souls
Mo’Nique – Precious (Wesley, Peter, Tripp)
Samantha Morton – The Messenger
Natalie Press – Fifty Dead Men Walking
Mia Wasikowska – That Evening Sun

Best Supporting Male

Jemaine Clement – Gentlemen Broncos
Woody Harrelson – The Messenger (Peter, Tripp)
Christian McKay – Me and Orson Welles
Raymond McKinnon – That Evening Sun
Christopher Plummer – The Last Station (Wesley)

Best Foreign Film

An Education – UK/France
Everlasting Moments – Sweden
The Maid – Chile
Mother – South Korea
Un Prophète – France (Wesley, Peter, Tripp)

Best Documentary

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Peter, Tripp)
Food, Inc. (Wesley)
More Than a Game
October Country
Which Way Home

Best Cinematography

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Cold Souls
A Serious Man (Peter)
Sin Nombre (Tripp)
Treeless Mountain (Wesley)

Piaget Producers Award

Karin Chien – The Exploding Girl, Santa Mesa
Larry Fessenden – I Sell the Dead, The House of the Devil (Wesley, Peter)
Dia Sokol – Beeswax, Nights & Weekends (Tripp)

Acura Someone to Watch Award

Kyle Patrick Alvarez – Easier with Practice (Wesley, Peter)
Asiel Norton – Redland
Tariq Tapa – Zero Bridge (Tripp)

Truer Than Fiction Award

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
45365 (Wesley, Tripp)
El General (Peter)

Predictions Commentary

Wesley Lovell: There’s one rule of thumb when picking the Spirit Award winners. If an Oscar nominee is on the list, pick that choice. While it’s not unusual for multiple Oscar nominees to show up on these lists, the winner is always one of them. Well, I say always, but I mean almost…In the last ten years of the Spirit Awards, only three Spirit Award winners were not the Oscar nominee in the bunch (In 1999, All About My Mother lost to non-nominee Run Lola Run; In 2000, Marcia Gay Harden lost to Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; In 2001, documentaries Lalee’s Kin and Promises both lost to Dogtown and Z-Boys). To put that into numbers, out of 62 categories in the last ten years where there was an Oscar nominee, 59 of those categories saw Oscar nominee winners. That’s a slightly higher than 95% success rate (not that this rule only applies to categories that directly correspond to Oscar). Now choosing which Oscar nominee will win is difficult and picking in those other categories is sometimes a crap shoot, but that’s my method of picking most of the wins above. Now, there is one exception and I’m predicting the fourth failure-to-correlate this year with (500) Days of Summer beating out The Messenger for Screenplay. I also think it’s a strong possibility that Anvil! will upset Food, Inc. for the win, but my prediction is the opposite.