L.A.’s Imagen Awards celebrating Latino excellence in film and tv were distributed on Sunday, with the top two director prizes going to filmmakers of animated productions and Encanto winning best feature over a stacked live-action lineup.
In each of the categories, in fact, the directors and their films were up against mostly live-action fare, but managed to come out on top with voters recognizing that the work was exemplary by any standard, and that it need not be treated differently simply for being animated.
Encanto was the biggest winner of the night, with four awards, taking best feature, best music composition in film or television, and best musical supervision film or television, in addition to directing honors. In the feature category, it was up against fellow animated picture Spirit Untamed from Dreamworks, as well as live-action films including Natalie Morales’ Language Lessons, Netflix’s In the Heights from Jon M. Chu, and Disney’s West Side Story directed by Steven Spielberg.