The New York Film Critics Circle, one of the nation’s oldest and most revered critics groups, kicks film awards season into high gear Tuesday as they select their picks for the best of 2024.
The group, made up of about 50 print and online film critics from around the city, is often the first major group of critics to announce their top picks for the year. Their winners are chosen by vote and by category; It traditionally took several hours for the prizes to be revealed.
The group selected as the winner of best non-fiction film ‘No Other Land’, an Israeli-Palestinian collaboration directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. Longtime film critic J. Hoberman recently named it the best film of the year in Artforum, describing it as an “explanation of the forced eviction in the occupied West Bank, made mainly on amateur digital video” about the “two-decade legal battle over the fate of an agricultural area with some twenty Palestinian villages.” The film is currently without distribution in North America.
Kieran Culkin was named best supporting actor for his role in ‘A Real Pain’ and best animated film went to ‘Flow’ by Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis.
The award for best first film went to “Janet Planet,” an A24 production by Annie Baker, and the award for best cinematography went to Jomo Fray for their first-person take on “Nickel Boys.”
Complete list of NYFCC winners (in progress)
- Film: To be determined
- Director: To be determined
- Actor: To be determined
- Actress: To be determined
- Supporting role: Kieran Culkin, “A Real Pain” (searchlight photos)
- Supporting role: To be determined
- Scenario: To be determined
- Animated film: “Flow” (Janus Films/Sideshow)
- Cinematography: “Nickel Boys”, Jomo Fray (Amazon MGM Studios)
- First movie: “Janet Planet”, Annie Baker (A24)
- International: To be determined
- Non-fiction film: “No Other Land” (no current distributor)
- Special mention: To be determined
- Special award: To be determined
Founded in 1935, less than a decade after the advent of the Academy Awards, the group has often positioned itself as an antidote to the Oscars’ choices and, paradoxically, as a bellwether for which films can play a part in the Oscars. next year’s race.
“Compared to the Oscars, the group’s best film 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 praises “Since 1935, the Academy Awards have given 43% of the NYFCC’s films the best picture.”
It’s been more than a decade since the NYFCC’s pick for Best Picture of the Year matched Oscar’s 2011 “The Artist.” Since then, most of their picks have been at least nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture, including last year’s selection of Martin Scorsese’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’.
The group’s choices for acting awards may fade even further from the mainstream, with some of their recent citations going to Regina Hall, best actress of 2018 for ‘Support the Girls’, Ethan Hawke, best actor of 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 Cameron Diaz the Best Actress award for the gross-out comedy “There’s Something About Mary.”
Their awards will be presented in January.
