Sophie Hyde’s sex-positive comedy-drama Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, which stars Emma Thompson as a middle-aged woman seeking physical fulfillment with a male sex worker, played by newcomer Daryl McCormack, won the Warner Bros. Discovery Audience Award for best narrative feature at the 24th Provincetown International Film Festival, which wrapped Sunday.
The corresponding prize for documentary feature, also voted by the in-person audience at this year’s event, went to Jean Carlomusto’s Esther Newton Made Me Gay, an exploration of LGBTQ history and gender studies through the life and work of the leading queer community chronicler.
Provincetown’s juried John Schlesinger Awards for first-time feature directors went for narrative to Max Walker-Silverman for A Love Song, which stars Dale Dickey and Wes Studi as childhood sweethearts whose paths intersect decades later against the rugged backdrop of the American West; and for documentary to Alex Pritz’s The Territory, which follows the fight of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people of Brazil to protect their land in the Amazon rainforest.
As previously announced, this year’s festival honorees included Dickey — represented in the lineup with A Love Song as well as a special screening of The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love — with the Excellence in Acting Award. Next Wave Awards went to Jenny Slate and Bowen Yang, who accompanied screenings of Marcel the Shell With Shoes On and Fire Island, respectively.
As is traditional for the Provincetown festival, John Waters presented the Filmmaker on the Edge Award to 2022 honoree Luca Guadagnino, who took a break from shooting Challengers near Boston to attend the Cape Cod event, accompanied by that film’s producer Amy Pascal and one of its stars, Josh O’Connor.
Guadagnino’s documentary, Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, about innovative Italian footwear designer Salvatore Ferragamo, closed the festival. The director’s upcoming cannibal romance, Bones and All, starring Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet, is expected to premiere at one of the major fall film festivals.
The Provincetown International Film Festival has announced dates for its 25th-anniversary edition June 14-18, 2023.