ensemble work by the Gotham Independent and Film Independent Spirit awards. In the movie, Keaton plays Boston Globe reporter/editor Walter Robinson, who led the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé of the Boston Archdiocese’s complicity in covering up widespread sexual abuse of children by priests.

The first winner announced this morning was the Auschwitz drama Son of Saul, named best first film. Set in 1944,the harrowing film follows a concentration camp victim torn between participating in a camp uprising or somehow providing a proper Jewish burial for a Nazi victim who may have been his son. Hungary’s official nominee for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, Son of Saul also has been nominated in the best international film category at the Spirit Awards and won four prizes at last May’s Cannes FilmFestival, including the FIPRESCI prize. Instead of naming Son of Saul best foreign film, NYFCC awarded it to a foreign film Oscar nominee from last season, Mauritania’s Timbuktu.

Unlike the National Board of Review which is prone to favoring titles that don’t exactly match up with those in the awards zeitgeist, NYFCC boasts a 43% bellwether rate when determining Oscar’s best picture. Last year, the organization named IFC’s Boyhood best picture, a title that remained in the conversation until Oscars were handed out. Back in February, many believed that if Birdman didn’t take best picture, then Boyhood would. While many were blindsided by Marion Cotillard’s best actress Oscar nomination last year for Two Days, One Night, the NYFCC already had some foresight and recognized her as their best actress