Days after the New York Film Critics Circle announced its annual winners, film critics in Los Angeles weighed in on the year’s best movies and performances.
“Anora” won a leading three awards: Best Picture and two acting trophies. Its filmmaker, Sean Baker, was also the runner-up for Best Director and Best Screenplay.
Acting winners included Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Hard Truths”) and Mikey Madison (“Anora”) for best lead performances, while Yura Borisov (“Anora”) and Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”) won the best supporting performance category. The runners-up in each respective category were Demi Moore (“The Substance”) and Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”), and Clarence Maclin (“Sing Sing”) and Adam Pearson (“A Different Man”). The Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards acting honors in genderless categories.
Read below for the full list of Los Angeles Film Critics Association winners.
Founded in 1975, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association “is comprised of Los Angeles-based, professional film critics working in the Los Angeles print and electronic media.” Among those brand-name critics who are part of the group include The New Yorker’s Justin Chang, Variety’s Peter Debruge, Los Angeles Times critic Amy Nicholson, and legendary critic Leonard Maltin. All told, there are 60 members in the group, with Robert Abele serving as president, Katie Walsh as vice president, Chang as secretary, and Annlee Ellingson as treasurer.
As with the New York Film Critics Circle, the LAFCA holds an annual event in January to honor its winners. Next year’s ceremony is set for January 11, 2025.
Last year, the LAFCA selected “The Zone of Interest” as Best Picture and the film’s director, Jonathan Glazer, as Best Director. The group also hands out performer awards in non-gendered categories for Best Lead Performance and Best Supporting Performance. Last year, LAFCA selected Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) and Sandra Huller (“Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Zone of Interest”) as the lead performance winners, while Jeffrey Wright (“American Fiction”) and Andrew Scott (“All of Us Strangers”) were chosen as runners-up. In the supporting category, Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”) and Rachel McAdams (“Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret”) won, with Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Ryan Gosling (“Barbie”) the runners-up. Stone and Randolph went on to win corresponding Oscars at the Academy Awards.
In addition to this year’s winners, the LAFCA will honor John Carpenter with the group’s career achievement award.
“John Carpenter is such an ideal choice not only for his ability to spin stylish, prescient, genre-bending features of otherworldly menace and powerful emotion, but also because his glorious career happens to span our group’s 50-year existence,” said LAFCA President Robert Abele. “That strong connection starts with LAFCA recognizing his horror prowess early on with our New Generation award in 1979 for his stone-cold classic Halloween. So it’s only fitting that this longtime Angeleno, whose nightmares always said more than what was on the surface, become our first New Generation recipient to also get our Career Achievement award.”
The full Los Angeles Film Critics Association list of winners is below.
BEST PICTURE
ANORA
Runner-up: THE BRUTALIST
BEST DIRECTOR
Mohammad Rasoulof, THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG
Runner-up: Sean Baker, ANORA
BEST LEAD PERFORMANCES
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, HARD TRUTHS, and Mikey Madison, ANORA
Runners-up: Demi Moore, THE SUBSTANCE, and Fernanda Torres, I’M STILL HERE
BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCES
Yura Borisov, ANORA, and Kieran Culkin, A REAL PAIN
Runners-up: Clarence Maclin, SING SING, and Adam Pearson, A DIFFERENT MAN
BEST SCREENPLAY
Jesse Eisenberg, A REAL PAIN
Runner-up: Sean Baker, ANORA
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Jomo Fray, NICKEL BOYS
Runner-up: Lol Crawley, THE BRUTALIST
BEST EDITING (TIE)
Nicholas Monsour, NICKEL BOYS
Hansjörg Weißbrich, SEPTEMBER 5
BEST MUSIC SCORE
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, CHALLENGERS
Runner-up: Eiko Ishibashi, EVIL DOES NOT EXIST
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Judy Becker, THE BRUTALIST
Runner-up: Adam Stockhausen, BLITZ
BEST ANIMATION
FLOW
Runner-up: CHICKEN FOR LINDA
BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM
NO OTHER LAND
Runner-up: DAHOMEY
BEST FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT
Runner-up: THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG
NEW GENERATION
Vera Drew for THE PEOPLE’S JOKER
DOUGLAS EDWARDS EXPERIMENTAL FILM PRIZE
Eduardo Williams’ THE HUMAN SURGE 3
