NYFCC Names The Brutalist Best

Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones in
The Brutalist.

Film award season has begun. The New York Film Critics Circle, the earliest of the reviewers' organization and the oldest--this is their 90th awards--met on Dec. 3 to vote for their choices for the best work of 2024. The Brutalist, Brady Corbet's epic film about a Hungarian-Jewish architect fleeing post-World War II Europe for America, was named Best Picture and won Best Actor for Adrien Brody. 

Marianne Jean-Bapiste was voted Best Actress for her performance as a woman suffering from depression and anger issues in Mike Leigh's Hard Truths. Carol Kane won Best Supporting Actress as a retired music teacher studying for her long-denied Bat Mitzvah and developing an attraction for a troubled cantor who was her former student in Between the Temples. Kieran Culkin was named Best Supporting Actor as a man touring Poland with his cousin to reconnect with their roots in A Real Pain.

Nickel Boys, based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, won for Best Director and Cinematography. Annie Baker's Janet Planet was elected Best First Film. The awards will be presented at a dinner on Jan. 8.

The group did not announce runners-up. Many of the winning films have not be released commercially yet.

List of 2024 New York Film Critics Circle Awards:

Best Film:
The Brutalist

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 the Temples

Best Screenplay:
Sean Baker, Anora

Best International Film:
All We Imagine as Light

Best Animated Film:
Flow

Best Cinematography:
Jomo Fray, Nickel Boys

Best Non-Fiction Film:
No Other Land

Best First Film:
Janet Planet

Special Award:
To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation