SS Rajamouli has won the Best Director award at the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), founded 1935. On December 2, the group gathered in New York to discuss and choose its choices for the coming year.
A special award was also given to the imprisoned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi “for his dogged bravery as an artist, and for the humanity and beauty of a body of work created under the most oppressive circumstances".
Tár, a contemporary drama by Todd Field about a celebrated conductor and composer, was named the best film of the year by the NYFCC, and Cate Blanchett's performance as the lead actress won best actress. Polish drama EO, which centres on a donkey, won the award for best foreign film.
Laura Poitras’ Nan Goldin documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' was named best nonfiction film. Colin Farrell won best actor for two of his performances this year, in Kogonada’s future-set sci-fi drama After Yang, in which he plays a father trying to repair his young daughter’s android, and in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, where he is suddenly defriended by his longtime pal (Brendan Gleeson).
McDonagh also received a prize for best screenplay for the film about the effects of a friendship breakup on the inhabitants of a small island off the west coast of Ireland in 1923. In September, Farrell, Blanchett, McDonagh and Poitras were recognised at the Venice Film Festival.
Ke Huy Quan was named best supporting actor for his turn in Everything Everywhere All At Once, close on the heels of his Gotham Award, while Keke Palmer got best supporting actress for Jordan Peele’s thriller Nope.
(With AP inputs)
