New York Film Critics Circle Names Best Film ‘The Brutalist’

Refresh for more…After close to three hours of deliberation, the New York Film Critics Circle named Brady Corbet’s 3-hour plus epic The Brutalist as Best Film.

A24 snapped up the movie out of its Venice Film Festival premiere. The movie, which stars Adrien Brody as a World War II Hungarian refugee architect in the U.S., also saw the former Oscar winning actor win Best Actor with the NYFCC. Guy Pearce stars in the film as the complex real estate tycoon who enlists the talents of Brody’s character, László Tóth. Corbet shot The Brutalist in Hungary with tax credits for under $10M. The Brutalist opens on Dec. 20. A24 will also be showing the epic, which also stars Felicity Jones and Alessandro Nivola, in 70MM.

It was a great evening last night for Nickel Boys director RaMell Ross, and it was a great morning to wake up to as the filmmaker was named Best Director by the NYFCC after he took home Best Director at the Gotham Awards last night. The Amazon MGM Studios theatrical release comes out on Dec. 13.

The first NYFCC award was announced at 6:50AM PST is Best Animated Feature for
Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow. Second award went to Kieran Culkin for Best Supporting Actor for his turn as an emotionally tortured young man in Jesse Eisenberg’s Searchlight drama, A Real Pain. Culkin won Best Lead Actor for a Drama Series at the 2023 Primetime Emmys for Succession.

In the Latvia-French-Belgian production Flow, Cat is a solitary animal, but as its home is devastated by a great flood, he finds refuge on a boat populated by various species, and will have to team up with them despite their differences.

Last year, the oldest critics group in the United States selected Apple Original Films’ Killers of the Flower Moon from Martin Scorsese as best film. The group bestowed Best Director to Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer.

While NYFCC winners often become Oscar nominees, and sometimes winners, when it comes to Best Picture, the group isn’t lockstep with the AMPAS voters: The last NYFCC Best Film to continue on and win Best Picture at the Oscars was 2011’s The Artist. 

Last year the NYFCC winners who ultimately won Oscars included Nolan for Best Director, Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers, The Boy and the Heron for Best Animated Feature, and Hoyte Van Hoytema for Oppenheimer in Best Cinematography.

This is the 90th anniversary of NYFCC whose members include Indiewire’s David Ehlrich (2024 vice chair) and Kate Erbland, New York Magazine’s Alison Wilmore and Bilge Ebiri, The Atlantic’s David Sims (2024 chair), and Time’s Stephanie Zacharek.  

The list of this year’s NYFCC winners is below. Keep checking back:

BEST FILM
The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet)

BEST DIRECTOR
RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys

BEST ACTOR
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

BEST ACTRESS
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Carol Kane, Between Two Temples

BEST SCREENPLAY
Anora, Sean Baker

BEST NON-FICTION FILM
No Other Land from Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor

BEST ANIMATED FILM
Flow

BEST FIRST FILM
Annie Baker’s Janet Planet

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM
All We Imagine As Light from Payal Kapadia

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Jomo Fray, Nickel Boys

SPECIAL AWARD

STUDENT AWARDS