2022 Los Angeles Film Critics (LAFCA): ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once,’ ‘TÁR’ tie for Best Picture

The 47th Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) awards are being announced today, celebrating the best films and performances of 2022, where Everything Everywhere All At Once and TÁR tied for Best Picture. It was only the fourth tie in the group’s history; in their first two years as a critics group, they tied in 1975 with Dog Day Afternoon and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and in 1976 with Network and Rocky. It wouldn’t happen again until 2013 with Gravity and Her.

Last year’s LAFCA winners included Drive My Car for Best Picture and Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog) for Best Director. Both went on to win respective Oscars for Best International Feature and Best Director.

Since 2000, only four of the LAFCA’s selections for best picture failed to garner an Oscar nod for best picture: About Schmidt (2002), American Splendor (2003), WALL-E (2008) and the ineligible Small Axe (2020). On the flip side, four of LAFCA’s Best Picture winners since 2000 have gone on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, and all since the Academy expanded its lineup from five to 10 possible nominees: The Hurt Locker (2009), Spotlight (2015), Moonlight (2016) and Parasite (2019).

For this year’s awards vote, LAFCA introduced gender-neutral acting categories, with two awards for Best Lead Performance, which went to Cate Blanchett for TÁR and Bill Nighy for Living, and two awards for Best Supporting Performance, which went to Dolly De Leon for Triangle of Sadness and Ke Huy Quan for Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Todd Field was a double winner, taking Best Director and Best Screenplay prizes for TÁR. The film joins the likes of Network, Kramer vs. Kramer, Terms of Endearment, Amadeus, Pulp Fiction, Bugsy, The Piano, L.A. Confidential, Sideways and The Social Network who did so in the past.

Claire Denis is the recipient of this year’s Career Achievement award. Previous winners have included filmmakers John Huston, Orson Welles and Billy Wilder, actors Robert Mitchum, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy and Robert Preston, producer Roger Corman, and, more recently, cinematographer Conrad L. Hall and composer Ennio Morricone.

Davy Chou and Park Ji-Min were the New Generation award winners for Return to Seoul (which had won Best Picture from Boston just minutes before). New Generation Award-winners who were voted most likely to succeed over the past three decades include Martin Scorsese and Jodie Foster (both 1976 recipients), John Carpenter, Sean Penn, Spike Lee, Pedro Almodóvar and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) is comprised of Los Angeles-based, professional film critics working in the Los Angeles print and electronic media.

Here is the full list of winners and runners-up.

• Best Picture: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE and TÁR (tie)

• Best Director: Todd Field (TÁR)
• Runner-up: S.S. Rajamouli (RRR)

• Best Lead Performers: Cate Blanchett (TÁR) and Bill Nighy (LIVING)
• Runners-up: Danielle Deadwyler (TILL) and Michelle Yeoh (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)

• Best Supporting Performers: Dolly De Leon (TRIANGLE OF SADNESS) and Ke Huy Quan (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)
• Runners-up: Jessie Buckley (WOMEN TALKING) and Brian Tyree Henry (CAUSEWAY)

• Best Screenplay: Todd Field (TÁR)
• Runner-up: Martin McDonagh (THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN)

• Best Cinematography: Michał Dymek (EO)
• Runner-up: Hoyte van Hoytema (NOPE)

• Best Production Design: Ben Procter (AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER)
• Runner-up: Jason Kisvarday (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)

• Best Editing: Blair McClendon (AFTERSUN)
• Runner-up: Monika Willi (TÁR)

• Best Music Score: M.M. Keeravani (RRR)
• Runner-up: Paweł Mykietyn (EO)

• Best Film Not in the English Language: EO
• Runner-up: SAINT OMER

• Best Documentary/Non-Fiction Film: ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED
• Runner-up: FIRE OF LOVE

• Best Animation: GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO
• Runner-up: MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

The Douglas Edwards Experimental/Independent Film/Video Award: DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA

Career Achievement: Claire Denis

New Generation Award: Davy Chou and Park Ji-Min (RETURN TO SEOUL)

Special Citation: Gwen Deglise, for her curation and celebration of cinema in Los Angeles for a quarter-century through the American Cinematheque