Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature

The Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature is one of the annual Independent Spirit Awards. It is usually given to the director (or directors) and producer (or producers). The "first feature" designation is applied to the director not the producer(s). Therefore, producers have been nominated multiple times.

In 2000, this category was split into two separate categories: one for films with budgets over $500,000 and a new category, the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award, which was restricted to films with budgets under $500,000. In 2001, films could be eligible regardless of their budget as long as it was feature film directorial debut.

NOTE: Beginning in 2000, nominees were restricted to film with budgets over $500,000. The Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award awarded first features that had budgets of less than $500,000.

...
Wikipedia