the Boston Film Critics Society met on Sunday to vote on its annual awards. The big winner was “Driving my car,” Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s film adaptation of a short story by Haruki Murakami about a theater manager unexpectedly confronted with his lingering grief. The Japanese drama won Best Picture, Best Actor, for Hidetoshi Nishijima, best director, for Hamaguchi, and best scenario for Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe. The film opens here on January 14.
When a Best Picture winner is a foreign film, the BCSF nominates an English-language winner. It was Jane Campion’s western “The Power of the Dog” which also won Best Cinematography, for Ari Wegner.
Best Actress honors went to Alana Haim, in “Licorice Pizza” Paul Thomas Anderson’s coming-of-age tale set in 1973 Southern California, The Movie, which opens on Boston Christmas Day, also won Best Ensemble. Troy Kotsur won Best Supporting Actor for “CODA,” in which he plays the deaf father of a hearing daughter; and Jessie Buckley won Best Supporting Actress for ‘The Lost Daughter,’ based on Elena Ferrante’s novel, which opens here December 17. The director of this film, Maggie Gyllenhaal, won Best New Filmmaker. The award is named after the late David Brudnoy, a longtime member of the BSFC.
Other winners include “Summer of Soul (. . . Or, when the revolution couldn’t be televised)», on the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, for the best documentary and, for the best animated film, “To flee,” a non-fiction account of a refugee’s odyssey from Afghanistan to Denmark.
Jonny Greenwood won Best Original Score for the Princess Diana biopic “Spencer” and Afonso Goncalves and Adam Kurnitz won Best Film Editing for “The Velvet Underground,” Todd Haynes’ documentary about the ’60s rock band. This award is given in honor of the late Karen Schmeer, best known for her work with documentary filmmaker Errol Morris.
The BSFC also cited several “rediscoveries” this year, all showing at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge or via Brattle’s Virtual Screening Room: “Possession” (nineteen eighty one), “The story of a three-day pass” (1967), “A False Move” (1992), “Hester Street” (1975), and “The Medallion” (1946).
The company also offered special congratulations to the Goethe-Institut Boston; ReelAbilities Film Festival Boston; Best Cramp, “for his decades of making quality non-fiction films and his commitment to progressive political, social and historical documentary work; the Coolidge Corner Theater Halloween Horror Marathon; and Tributes to Luther Price and Barbara Hammer, presented by the Revolutions Per Minute festival and hosted by the Brattle.
Mark Feeney can be contacted at mark.feeney@globe.com.
