‘The Substance’ Cleans Up at The LGBTQ Dorian Film Awards

On Thursday, GALECA, the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, announced the winners of its 16th Dorian Film Awards, naming The Substance as 2024 Film of the Year. 

The Substance star Demi Moore earned the award for Film Performance of the Year, overcoming stiff competition from lauded nominees like Adrien Brody in The Brutalist and Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo. Oscar front-runner Moore, who’s already picked up a Golden Globe for her performance in the Mubi release, was joined in the Dorian Awards winners’ circle by The Substance filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, named Director of the Year. 

The pair’s top wins signaled an enthusiastic embrace of Fargeat’s outlandish Hollywood satire, which, all told, took five Dorian Awards, including wins for Genre Film of the Year, and Campiest Flick (even though also-nominated Madame Web was right there).

Further, Moore’s all-guts-no-glory turn as a TV star desperate to defeat aging helped earn the screen vet the group’s most cherished Dorian Award — Timeless Star, honoring “an exemplary career marked by character, wisdom and wit.”

The former Brat Packer joins an esteemed club of past recipients that includes Jodie Foster, Jane Fonda, Nathan Lane, John Waters, Rita Moreno, George Takei, and Sir Ian McKellen.

The Dorians are determined by the votes of GALECA’s nearly 500 LGBTQ entertainment critics, journalists, and media icons, a diverse membership whose collective tastes elicit intriguing choices every year.

The group also distinguishes achievements in queer filmmaking in several categories. The Dorian Award for LGBTQ Film of the Year went to I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun’s time- and mind-bending trans allegory, which also earned the writer-director a win for LGBTQ Screenplay of the Year.

I Saw the TV Glow entered the voting leading all nominees with nine nods, followed by The Substance with eight, and Challengers and Emilia Pérez, both tied with six. While Luca Guadagnino’s ménage-a-tennis Challengers was totally snubbed in the Oscar nominations, along with his drama Queer, the film came up a winner with Dorians for Screenplay of the Year and Film Music of the Year.

Emilia Pérez, despite a notable loss of collective enthusiasm driven by controversies too numerous to elaborate here, still garnered LGBTQ Non-English Film of The Year. Jacques Audiard’s trans-themed musical crime-thriller certainly was the something of this year, though no one might ever agree what that something was. 

The world, however, seems to have agreed that the sweethearts of the film year were the pink and green Wicked pair who rode an insurmountable wave of musical love and pop culture saturation to three-quarters of a billion in worldwide box office. GALECA showed both Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo love — Grande for Supporting Film Performance of the Year and Erivo awarded this year’s LGBTQIA+ Film Trailblazer “for creating art that inspires empathy, truth, and equity.”

Their Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey earned the “We’re Wilde About You!” Rising Star Award, capping his breakout year as one of the out and outspoken artists whose work the Dorian Awards exist to support and celebrate.

Other winners included Sing Sing’s Colman Domingo, voted the Wilde Artist Award, Julio Torres’ Problemista for Unsung Film of the Year, Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker for Unsung LGBTQ Film of the Year, and, for Documentary of the Year, Netflix’s Will & Harper.

A full list of winners follows:

FILM OF THE YEAR
Anora (Neon)
Challengers (Amazon MGM Studios)
I Saw the TV Glow (A24)
Nickel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)
⭐️ The Substance (Mubi)

LGBTQ FILM OF THE YEAR
Challengers (Amazon MGM Studios)
Emilia Pérez (Netflix)
⭐️ I Saw the TV Glow (A24)
Love Lies Bleeding (A24)
Queer (A24)

DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist (A24)
⭐️ Coralie Fargeat, The Substance (Mubi)
Luca Guadagnino, Challengers (Amazon MGM Studios)
RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)
Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow (A24)

SCREENPLAY OF THE YEAR (Original or adapted)
Sean Baker, Anora (Neon)
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance (Mubi)
⭐️ Justin Kuritzkes, Challengers (Amazon MGM Studios)
Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow (A24)
Peter Straughan, Conclave (Focus Features)

LGBTQ SCREENPLAY OF THE YEAR
Rose Glass and Weronika Tofilska, Love Lies Bleeding (A24)
Justin Kuritzkes, Challengers (Amazon MGM Studios)
Justin Kuritzkes, Queer (A24)
⭐️ Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow (A24)
Julio Torres, Problemista (A24)

NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR
All We Imagine as Light (Sideshow / Janus Films)
Emilia Pérez (Netflix)
Flow (Sideshow / Janus Films)
⭐️ I’m Still Here (Sony Pictures Classics)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Neon)

LGBTQ NON-ENGLISH FILM OF THE YEAR
Crossing (Mubi)
⭐️ Emilia Pérez (Netflix)
Queendom (Greenwich Entertainment)
Vermiglio (Sideshow / Janus Films)
All Shall Be Well (Strand Releasing)

UNSUNG FILM OF THE YEAR
—To an exceptional movie worthy of greater attention
Didi (Focus Features)
Hundreds of Beavers (Cineverse, Vinegar Syndrome)
My Old Ass (Amazon MGM Studios)
⭐️ Problemista (A24)
Thelma (Magnolia)

UNSUNG LGBTQ FILM OF THE YEAR
Femme (Utopia)
My Old Ass (Amazon MGM Studios)
National Anthem (Variance, LD Entertainment)
⭐️ The People’s Joker (Altered Innocence)
Problemista (A24)

FILM PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist (A24)
Daniel Craig, Queer (A24)
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing (A24)
Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez (Netflix)
Cynthia Erivo, Wicked (Universal)
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths (Bleecker Street)
Nicole Kidman, Babygirl (A24)
Mikey Madison, Anora (Neon)
⭐️ Demi Moore, The Substance (Mubi)
Justice Smith, I Saw the TV Glow (A24)

SUPPORTING FILM PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR
Michele Austin, Hard Truths (Bleecker Street)
Yura Borisov, Anora (Neon)
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures)
⭐️ Ariana Grande, Wicked (Universal)
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Nickel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)
Jack Haven, I Saw the TV Glow (A24)
Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing (A24)
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist (A24)
Margaret Qualley, The Substance (Mubi)
Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez (Netflix)

DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR
Dahomey (Mubi)
Daughters (Netflix)
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix)
Sugarcane (National Geographic)
⭐️ Will & Harper (Netflix)

LGBTQ DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR
Chasing Chasing Amy (Level 33)
Frida (Amazon MGM Studios)
Merchant Ivory (Cohen Media Group)
Queendom (Greenwich Entertainment)
⭐️ Will & Harper (Netflix)

ANIMATED FILM OF THE YEAR
⭐️ Flow (Sideshow / Janus Films)
Inside Out 2 (Disney)
Memoir of a Snail (IFC Films)
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Netflix)
The Wild Robot (Universal, DreamWorks)

GENRE FILM OF THE YEAR
For excellence in science fiction, fantasy and horror
Dune: Part Two (Warner Bros.)
I Saw the TV Glow (A24)
Nosferatu (Focus Features)
⭐️ The Substance (Mubi)
Wicked (Universal)

FILM MUSIC OF THE YEAR
The Brutalist (A24) – Daniel Blumberg
⭐️ Challengers (Amazon MGM Studios) – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
Emilia Pérez (Netflix) – Clément Ducol and Camille
I Saw the TV Glow (A24) – Alex G
Wicked (Universal) – John Powell and Stephen Schwartz, et al.

VISUALLY STRIKING FILM OF THE YEAR
The Brutalist (A24)
Dune: Part Two (Warner Bros.)
Nosferatu (Focus Features)
⭐️ Nickel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)
The Substance (Mubi)

CAMPIEST FLICK
Hundreds of Beavers (Cineverse, Vinegar Syndrome)
Madame Web (Sony)
Megalopolis (Lionsgate)
⭐️ The Substance (Mubi)
Trap (Warner Bros.)

“WE’RE WILDE ABOUT YOU!” RISING STAR AWARD
⭐️ Jonathan Bailey
Vera Drew
Karla Sofía Gascón
Jack Haven
Mikey Madison
Katy O’Brian
Drew Starkey

WILDE ARTIST AWARD
To a truly groundbreaking force in entertainment
⭐️ Colman Domingo
Luca Guadagnino
Coralie Fargeat
Jane Schoenbrun
Tilda Swinton

GALECA LGBTQIA+ FILM TRAILBLAZER
For creating art that inspires empathy, truth, and equity
Vera Drew
⭐️ Cynthia Erivo
Luca Guadagnino
Jane Schoenbrun
Julio Torres

TIMELESS STAR
Honoring an exemplary career marked by character, wisdom, and wit
⭐️ Demi Moore

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