America's finest film and television artists were among the guests honored today by the American Film Institute (AFI) at its annual AFI AWARDS 2015 luncheon. With no winners or losers, AFI AWARDS celebrates the creative ensembles behind the year's most outstanding storytelling in film and television.
In addition to the 20 honorees of 2015, AFI recognized MAD MEN with an AFI Special Award, acknowledging its landmark contributions to America's cultural legacy across nine years. In the history of AFI AWARDS, no other television series has earned as many honors.
AFI also revealed its official rationales (below) for all honorees, providing the cultural and artistic context to mark these outstanding creative endeavors as the year's notable milestones. Additionally, attending artists contributed to the Institute's ongoing almanac of excellence by recording video comments about the state of the film and television art forms. A video compilation of these interviews will be published on AFI.com on Thursday, January 14, 2016.
Closing the luncheon, legendary American director/producer/writer - and 2014 AFI Honorary Degree recipient - Robert Towne (CHINATOWN, MAD MEN) delivered the annual benediction in tribute to the honorees and their remarkable achievements in film and television.
Representing their creative teams, including all 10 directors of this year's AFI AWARDS official film selections, were guests such as: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Adam McKay and Marisa Tomei (THE BIG SHORT); Steven Spielberg (BRIDGE OF SPIES); Cate Blanchett, Todd Haynes, Rooney Mara and Harvey Weinstein (CAROL); Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera (INSIDE OUT); George Miller (MAD MAX: FURY ROAD); Drew Goddard and Ridley Scott (THE MARTIAN); Lenny Abrahamson, Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay (ROOM); Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (SPOTLIGHT); J.J. Abrams, Bob Iger and Lawrence Kasdan (STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS); F. Gary Gray, O'Shea Jackson, Jr. and Jason Mitchell (STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON); Joel Fields (THE AMERICANS); Jonathan Banks and Vince Gilligan (BETTER CALL SAUL); Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross (BLACK-ISH); llene Chaiken and Brian Grazer (EMPIRE); Kirsten Dunst (FARGO); David Benioff and D. B. Weiss (GAME OF THRONES); Claire Danes and David Nevins (HOMELAND); Jon Hamm, January Jones, Kiernan Shipka and Matthew Weiner (MAD MEN); Aziz Ansari (MASTER OF NONE); Portia Doubleday, Rami Malek and Christian Slater (MR. ROBOT); and Constance Zimmer (UNREAL).
AFI AWARDS 2015 boasted a strong AFI Conservatory alumni presence, with 39 alumni among the storytellers behind the year's most outstanding movies and TV series. Conservatory alumni in significant positions of achievement who received AFI AWARDS included BRIDGE OF SPIES cinematographer Janusz Kami ski ; CAROL editor Affonso Gon alves ; HOMELAND executive producer/director Lesli Linka Glatter (AFI Conservatory Directing Workshop for Women, Class of 1982) and executive producer/writer Gideon Raff ; MAD MEN director Jennifer Getzinger ; MR. ROBOT creator Sam Esmail and executive producer Steve Golin ; Golin was also honored for SPOTLIGHT, featuring Mark Ruffalo as The Boston Globe reporter Michael Rezendes ; STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON cinematographer Matthew Libatique ; and UNREAL co-creator Sarah Gertrude Shapiro , who based the Lifetime series on her AFI Conservatory Directing Workshop for Women short SEQUIN RAZE.
AFI Board of Trustees in attendance included: AFI Board of Trustees Chair Sir Howard Stringer, AFI Board of Directors Chair Bob Daly, Jon Avnet, Jim Breyer, John Burke, former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, Nancy Fisher, Jean Picker Firstenberg, Richard Frank, Jim Gianopulos, Brad Grey, Marshall Herskovitz, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Donna Langley, Debra Lee, Lori Lee, Ron Meyer, Tom Pollock, Rich Ross, Ted Sarandos, Chris Silbermann, Steven Spielberg, George Stevens, Jr., Kevin Tsujihara and Michael Wright.
Official sponsors included Audi and American Airlines, the official airline of the American Film Institute.
Tom Pollock, chair of the film jury and an AFI Board of Trustees Vice Chair, recognized the film honorees with a reading of the official rationales. Richard Frank, chair of the television jury and an AFI Board of Trustees Vice Chair, similarly acknowledged the TV honorees. The following rationales were recorded into the American Film Institute's almanac for 2015:
AFI AWARDS 2015 - FILM RATIONALES
THE BIG SHORT achieves the extraordinary - making sense of the 2008 market collapse and making it entertaining. Adam McKay's whip-smart satire pulses with brazen pacing, pop-up celebrity cameos and AAA performances from Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt. This endlessly innovative comedy is also an object lesson in greed's consequences for the many and, ultimately, a tale to break a nation's heart.
BRIDGE OF SPIES is history written in moving images and another chapter in this nation's collective chronicle brought to life by an American master, Steven Spielberg. A brilliant script by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen serves as code to crack this story of the Cold War, with Tom Hanks proving his place in the canon alongside cinema's great everyman heroes. His charge to defend a Soviet spy - portrayed in a transformative turn from Mark Rylance - embodies our nation in its finest hour, fighting for what's right no matter the cost.
CAROL sets the screen aglow with the light of longing as Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara transform a period piece into a timeless cry from defiant hearts. Todd Haynes serves their romance as a restorative cocktail, adding splashes of color to a repressive Eisenhower-era, when love was often seen in black-and-white. From luminous performances to sumptuous production, this is cinema's promise fulfilled - a haunting portrait in moving image
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
America's finest film and television artists were among the guests honored today by the American Film Institute (AFI) at its annual AFI AWARDS 2015 luncheon. With no winners or losers, AFI AWARDS celebrates the creative ensembles behind the year's most outstanding storytelling in film and television.
