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Actor-turned-director Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” was named the best film of 2024 by the New York Film Critics Circle Tuesday afternoon. One of the nation’s oldest and most venerated critics’ groups, the NYFCC traditionally kicks the movie awards season into high gear.
The group, comprised of roughly 50 print and online movie reviewers based in the city, is frequently the first major critics’ group to announce its best-of choices for the year. Their winners are chosen via ballot, and on a category-by-category basis.
“The Brutalist,” a three-and-a-half-hour period piece, was also cited for Adrian Brody’s central performance. Meanwhile, Marianne Jean-Baptiste was named the year’s best actress for “Hard Truths,” her reunion with British director Mike Leigh. She was previously nominated for an Oscar for her role in Leigh’s “Secrets & Lies.”
The best director prize went to RaMell Ross for his adaptation of author Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel “Nickel Boys.”
Full list of NYFCC winners (in progress)
- Film: “The Brutalist” (A24)
- Director: RaMell Ross, “Nickel Boys” (Amazon MGM Studios)
- Actor: Adrian Brody, “The Brutalist” (A24)
- Actress: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, “Hard Truths” (Bleecker Street)
- Supporting Actor: Kieran Culkin, “A Real Pain” (Searchlight Pictures)
- Supporting Actress: Carol Kane, “Between the Temples” (Sony Pictures Classics)
- Screenplay: “Anora,” Sean Baker (Neon)
- International Film: “All We Imagine As Light” (Janus Films/Sideshow)
- Non-Fiction Film: “No Other Land” (No current distributor)
- Animated Film: “Flow” (Janus Films/Sideshow)
- Cinematography: “Nickel Boys,” Jomo Fray (Amazon MGM Studios)
- First Film: “Janet Planet,” Annie Baker (A24)
- Special Award: To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation
The group selected as its best non-fiction film winner “No Other Land,” an Israel-Palestinian collaboration directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. Longtime film critic J. Hoberman recently called it the year’s best film in Artforum, describing it as an “explication of forced expulsion on the occupied West Bank made mostly on amateur digital video” about the “two-decade legal battle over the fate of an agrarian area with some twenty Palestinian villages.” The film is currently without distribution in North America.
The NYFCC also named “All We Imagine As Light,” by Payal Kapadia, as the year’s best international film. The Indian film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival last spring. While films that win this award are often tipped for the international feature Oscar, the jury responsible for selecting India’s submission to the Academy instead opted for Kiran Rao’s “Lost Ladies,” so if Kapadia’s film is to be nominated for an Oscar, it will have to be in the general categories.
“Anora,” which won the top prize — the Palme d’Or — at Cannes earlier this year, won the NYFCC award for best screenplay, by writer-director Sean Baker. Baker was previously named by New York critics as best director in 2017 for “The Florida Project.”
Kieran Culkin was named best supporting actor for his role in “A Real Pain,” and Carol Kane was selected as the year’s best supporting actress for the Nate Silver drama “Between the Temples.”
The best animated film award went to “Flow,” by Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis. The best first film prize went to “Janet Planet,” an A24 production hellmed by Annie Baker, and the award for best cinematography went to Jomo Fray for their first-person viewpoints of “Nickel Boys.”
NYFCC history dates back nine decades
The group launched in 1935, less than a decade after the advent of the Academy Awards, and has frequently positioned itself as an antidote to the Oscars’ choices and, paradoxically, a bellwether of what films may factor into the following year’s Oscar race.
“Compared with the Oscars, the group’s best picture track record speaks for itself: ‘Citizen Kane’ over ‘How Green Was My Valley’; ‘A Clockwork Orange’ over ‘The French Connection’; ‘Day for Night’ over ‘The Sting’; ‘Goodfellas’ over ‘Dances with Wolves,'” the organization touts. “Since 1935, the Academy Awards have given best picture to 43% of the NYFCC’s picks.”
It’s been more than a decade since the NYFCC pick for the year’s best movie has matched up with Oscar’s choice — 2011’s “The Artist.” Since then, most of their picks have at least been nominated for the best picture Academy Award, including last year’s selection of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
The group’s choices for acting prizes can be even further out of the mainstream, with some of their recent citations going to Regina Hall, best actress in 2018 for “Support the Girls,” Ethan Hawke, best actor in 2018 for “First Reformed,” and Charles Melton, best supporting actor in 2023 for “May December.” On the other hand, the NYFCC made waves in 1998 when they awarded their best actress prize to Cameron Diaz for the gross-out comedy “There’s Something About Mary.”
Their awards will be handed out in January.
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