AFT Awards: Best Breakthrough Performance

This is the twentieth category of the 8th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions:
Ashley Aufderheide (Infinitely Polar Bear), Deke Garner (Hellion), Fabio Audi (The Way He Looks), Imogene Wolodarsky (Infinitely Polar Bear), Lorelei Linklater (Boyhood), Tess Amorim (The Way He Looks)

The winner:
Josh Wiggins (Hellion) played a child seemingly intent on skipping over his childhood and ensuring a rough future for himself despite his intelligence and potential, a complex and mesmerizing performance from a teenager.

Other nominees:
Tizita Hagere (Difret) starred in Ethiopia’s Oscar submission for Best Foreign Film, delivering a mature and heartfelt portrayal of a young girl caught in an impossible situation. Jack O'Connell (Starred Up) was on fire as a convict set on making his time in prison brutal, a stark contrast to two other worthwhile performances in “Unbroken” and 2015’s “’71,” which just opened. Ellar Coltrane (Boyhood) doesn’t need a blurb to explain why his performance was a breakthrough, demonstrating massive range and growth over the course of twelve years. Ghilherme Lobo (The Way He Looks) was sweet, gentle, and extremely grown up as a blind teenager trying to navigate his possibilities for the future.