“Nomadland,” a drama about pickup truck life, the gig economy and the modern American underclass, was named the best film of 2020 by the Boston Society of Film Critics on Sunday. The film, which stars Frances McDormand and opens nationwide in February after sweeping the fall film festival circuit, also won for direction by Chloe Zhao (“The Rider”) and for cinematography. screen by Joshua James Richards.
Even in a year marked by the closure of cinemas and the convulsions of the streaming revolution, BSFC voting members cast a wide net honoring films and filmmakers for the group’s 41st annual awards. Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor for his portrayal of a man navigating the shoals of senile dementia in ‘The Father’ – the company’s first award for the 82-year-old actor since ‘The Silence of the Dead’. Lambs” in 1991. In contrast, Best Actress winner Sidney Flanigan, 21, had never appeared in a film until “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” in which she plays a rural teenage girl from Pennsylvania traveling to New York for an abortion.
Paul Raci won Best Supporting Actor as a 12-step deaf counselor in “Sound of Metal,” which brought the longtime actor, musician, and American Sign Language activist to a new audience. The same could be said for 73-year-old Youn Yuh-jung, a South Korean film legend whose role as the sour-tongued grandmother in the tender immigrant saga “Minari” won her the award for Best Supporting Actress from Boston Critics.
The Best Ensemble Cast award went to ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’, whose cast includes Viola Davis, Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman and – in his last film appearance – Chadwick Boseman, who died of cancer. in August. It begins streaming on Netflix on December 18.
Charlie Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” won two awards, for screenplay – Kaufman adapted a 2016 novel by Iain Reid – and for editing by Robert Frazen, the latter awarded in honor of the late editor Karen Schmeer. Best Non-English Language Film, awarded in memory of Boston Globe film critic Jay Carr, went to the Guatemalan political horror film “La Llorona.” Florian Zeller, French novelist and playwright, won the David Brudnoy award for best new filmmaker for “The Father”. As with “Nomadland” and “Minari”, “The Father” will see a commercial release in February 2021.
Romania is devastating “Collectiveabout a nightclub fire that exposed a corrupt national healthcare system was named Best Documentary of 2020.The wolf’s house”, a gripping stop-motion drama from Chile, won the award for Best Animated Film of 2020.
Additionally, Boston critics praised Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Education seminar program, extended during the pandemic in virtual space, at the Cambridge-based Docyardand filmmaker Frederick Wiseman and his distribution company, Sephora Films.
The fact that some of the films honored by the company hit theaters earlier this year, others only debuted on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, and still others won’t see a wide release before the start of 2021, is a mark of the chaos rocking the cinematic landscape in a year of global sickness, state shutdowns and the growing dominance of video on demand. That films and performances of such quality continue to find their way to audiences remains a mark of the medium’s continued vitality.
The society, which currently has 26 active members, dedicated the 2020 awards meeting “to the solidarity and support of local cinemas, cinema workers and all those who persevere in supporting the cinema exhibition industry. in these difficult times.”
