‘Moonlight’ is the big winner at the Film Independent Spirit Awards

As she took the Spirit Awards stage to present an acting ensemble prize to “Moonlight,� “Scandal� star Kerry Washington ‎was struck by a moment of spontaneous emotion.‎

“Oh dear Lord, I love this movie,� she said.

She wasn’t alone at the Spirits.

Barry Jenkins’ tale of gay becoming won six awards, including the top prizes of feature and director, as “Moonlight� captivated the Spirit Awards on Saturday much as it has critics and moviegoers throughout the season. A warmth emanated from both the audience (multiple standing ovations) and the stage (a trading off of acceptance speeches among many of its principals) as “Moonlight� racked up the honors.

“I come from a little neighborhood that little people know,� Tarell Alvin McCraney, the playwright on whose semi-autobiographical work the movie is based, said about the hardscrabble part of Miami that is the film’s setting. “[This is] a story worth telling and sharing.�

Washington put it another way: “We didn’t know that we wanted ‘Moonlight,’ but now that it’s here, we know that we needed it, and in witnessing it, we are forever transformed.�

Run by the Los Angeles-based Film Independent and held under a tent on the Santa Monica beach, the Spirit Awards are an annual opportunity for the indie film world to toast and roast its own. They are an antidote — and in recent years increasingly an adjunct — to the following day’s Oscars.

After long deviating from the big show — only one common best picture winner in the first 26 years of existence — the Spirit Awards lately have become a bellwether for them. In the past five years, the groups have overlapped in the top category four times, including last year’s winner, “Spotlight.�

That consensus could be a tougher feat to replicate this year, as Oscar best picture frontrunner “La La Land� exceeded the budget ceiling of $20 million and thus wasn’t eligible for the Spirits.

‎Among other top awards Saturday, lead actress went to longtime prestige-cinema favorite Isabelle Huppert for her turn as an unconventional rape victim in “Elle,� as the French performer continued a run that‎ began with her Golden Globes upset. “Manchester by the Sea� star Casey Affleck, meanwhile, scooped up actor honors, assisted by the absence of main Oscar rival Denzel Washington, whose “Fences� was also ineligible for budget reasons.

Yet the issue of awards forecasting was almost beside the point on Saturday. At a moment when rancorous politics ‎have dominated national headlines, the Spirits were content to put their own spin on current affairs: with inclusion and celebration more than diatribe and protest.

The show brought a smattering of political comments (Affleck noted that “the policies of this administration are abhorrent and they will not last�), while hosts John Mulaney and Nick Kroll took a few shots at the current White House occupant. (Mulaney: “Hey Donald Trump, you and [“The Jinx� murder suspect] Robert Durst are both from New York real estate empires. Yet somehow Robert Durst is more likable.�)

But the humor also contained a dollop of self-awareness. (Kroll, “If this room leaned any further to the left we would literally topple into the ‎Pacific.�)

Maybe more important, winners were content to lead by intimate example more than sweeping statemen‎t. In accepting the John Cassavetes award for a micro-budget film, Andrew Ahn, director of the Koreatown-set gay drama “Spa Night,� said, ‎�This is so meaningful, that this award is going to a film about a Korean American immigrant family, about queer Korean American people.�

He added: “Now more than ever, it’s so important that we support stories told by and about communities that are marginalized…. We are part of this great country, and we are undeniable.�

“Moonlight� producer Adele Romanski noted that‎ all the films being lauded and discussed recently “really speak to this appetite and this need for stories that are bold and defy easy categorization. And I think people are telling us that’s what the‎y want to see.�

The wins for “Moonlight� were also a triumph for A24, the New York-based upstart distributor, which also won two debut-film prizes for its Puritan-set horror film “The Witch.�

“Moonlight,� which has garnered $21 million at the box office, has been a favorite since it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in late summer. Its story behind the camera — of a playwright whose work was not widely staged, and a director who had gone many years between films — is now well known. That lore contributed to the goodwill at the ceremony as did its consciousness-raising message of understanding, made more topical by Trump-era divisions.

Jenkins, speaking about his collaborators but in a sense also talking to the room and viewers tuning in to the live broadcast, summed up that feeling.

“This [statue] has my name on it,� he said in his acceptance speech. “But it’s absolutely about all y’all.�

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Twitter:@GeBraxton