Tuesday evening winners of the 17th annual Gotham awards were announced.  Amongst the top winners were Sicko, Juno, and Into The Wild. The Gotham Awards are put on annually by IFP, the country’s largest membership organization of independent filmmakers.  This year, for the first time, the awards ceremony was held at Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios in the heart of New York City’s resurgent film industry.

Competitive juried awards were presented in the following categories: Best Documentary, Best Feature, Breakthrough Actor, Breakthrough Director, Best Ensemble Cast, and the awards ceremony’s trademark honor, Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near  You.

• Best Feature – Into the Wild
• Best Documentary – Sicko
• Breakthrough Director – Craig Zobel for “Great World of Sound”
• Breakthrough Actor – Ellen Page in “Juno”
• Best Ensemble Cast – “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” and “Talk to Me”
• Best Film Not Playing At a Theater Near You -”Frownland”

Six Tributes were also presented in addition to the juried awards. Recipients included:

• Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men, Love in the Time of Cholera)
• NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg
• Film Critic Roger Ebert
• Production Designer Mark Friedberg (Across the Universe, The Darjeeling Limited)
• IFC Entertainment President Johnathan Sehring
• Filmmaker Mira Nair (The Namesake, Salaam Bombay!)