Read the full list of winners.
The 2020-2021 awards season is now beginning to resume, as the New York Film Critics Circle has announced the winners of its annual awards. Made up of reviewers from newspapers, magazines and online publications, the review group dates back to 1935 and includes IndieWire’s Eric Kohn, David Ehrlich and Kate Erbland.
The top prize, Best Picture, is Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow,” which hit theaters in March before being pulled from theaters and rescheduled for VOD release later in the year due to the pandemic. The other winners span a range of films, with ‘Da 5 Bloods’ and ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ being the only two titles to earn two separate wins: ‘Da 5 Bloods’ won Best Actor for Delroy Lindo and the Best Supporting Actor. for Chadwick Boseman, while “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” won Best Screenplay for its writer-director, Eliza Hittman, and Best Actress for newcomer Sidney Flanigan.
All of the other films honored won only one award: the award for what many consider one of this year’s Oscar favorites, “Nomadland,” was Best Director for Chloe Zhao. Maria Bakalova won Best Supporting Actress for playing Borat’s daughter Tutar in ‘Borat Later Moviefilm’. The “Small Axe” anthology collectively won Best Cinematography, with none of those five Steve McQueen films making the cut. “Time” won Best Non-Fiction Film, “Bacurau” won Best Foreign Language Film, and “The Forty-Year-Old Version” won Best Debut Film.
The NYFCC Awards mark the first major group of critics to hand out accolades in an awards season that has moved to follow the lead of the Oscars. The Oscars ceremony has been postponed for two months.
So far, the Gotham Awards nominees have been announced, and the European Film Awards handed out trophies virtually last week.
While the NYFCC is known for honoring top Oscar contenders, it also praises unconventional and beloved choices, like when the Safdie brothers won Best Director for ‘Uncut Gems’ or when he gave Regina Hall Best Actress for “Support the Girls” in 2018.
The Best Feature winner is often an Oscar heavyweight, with recent winners ‘The Irishman’, ‘Roma’, ‘Lady Bird’ and ‘La La Land’ all taking Best Picture nominations.
The 2019 NYFCC winners who went on to take home the Oscars are “Parasite” (which took home the Oscars with Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature, after winning the Language NYFCC Foreign) and Best Supporting Actress. winner Laura Dern (“Marriage Story”). NYFCC winners “I Lost My Body”, “Honeyland”, Joe Pesci (“The Irishman”) and Antonio Banderas (“Pain and Glory”) have been nominated for Oscars after their wins.
Here is the full list of winners:
Best film : “First Cow”
Best Director: Chloe Zhao, “Nomadland”
Best Screenplay: Eliza Hittman, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”
Best Actress: Sidney Flanigan, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”
Best actor: Delroy Lindo, “Da 5 Bloods”
Best Supporting Actress: Maria Bakalova, “Later Borat Film”
Best Supporting Actor: Chadwick Boseman, “Da 5 Bloods”
Best Cinematography: “Little Axe” (All films)
Best non-fiction film: “Time”
Best Foreign Language Film: “Bacureau”
Best Animated Film: “Wolves Walkers”
Best first film: “The 40-Year-Old Version”
Special Price: Kino Lorber, “for their creation of Kino Marquee, a virtual cinema distribution service that was designed to help sustain movie theaters, not destroy them.”
Special Price: Spike Lee, “for inspiring the New York community with his short film ‘New York New York’ and for advocating for a better society through film.”
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