We met yesterday to vote on the year’s best. It’s always a somewhat grueling process, because it’s about counting, and tallying up all the blind votes. We often go into multiple rounds. But we did eventually come up with the winners. Deadline has good background context for some of these categories and the history behind certain wins. Some of my favorites won – probably not hard to guess which ones – and some of my favorites weren’t even on other peoples’ ballots at all. This is how it always goes, I imagine, for all of us. I’m just glad Jafar Panahi is on the list! It Was Just an Accident is the best film of the year. And not every director receives a prison sentence (yet another one) from his home country the day before he wins NYFCC’s Best Director.
Best Film: One Battle After Another, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Director: Jafar Panahi, It Was Just an Accident
Actor: Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
Actress: Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Supporting Actor: Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another
Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan, Weapons
Screenplay: Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Animated Film: KPop Demon Hunters, directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans
Cinematography: Autumn Arkapaw Durald, Sinners
Non-Fiction Film: My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, directed by Julia Loktev
International Film: The Secret Agent, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho
First Film: Eephus, directed by Carson Lund
Special Prizes: Museum of Moving Image, Screen Slate
Student Prizes: London Xhudo (Undergraduate, NYU) and Tan Zhiyuan (Graduate, The New School)
