2024 Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) Winners: ‘The Brutalist’ is Best Pic; ‘Challengers,’ ‘Nickel Boys’ Earn Multiple Awards

The Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) today announced their 2024 award winners with Best Picture of the year going to Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, which also picked up the Best Actor prize for Adrien Brody.

Nickel Boys earned the most honors with four total wins. RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was the winner for Best Director, Best Best Adapted Screenplay (Ross with Joslyn Barnes), Best Cinematography (Jomo Fray) and the Breakthrough Filmmaker Award for Ross’s future career potential.

Elsewhere among the winners, Marianne Jean-Baptiste earned Best Actress honors for her role in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths. Challengers (Luca Guadagnino) and A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg) both earned two wins; Best Editing (Marco Costa) and Best Original Score (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) for the former, and Best Supporting Actor (Kieran Culkin) and Best Original Screenplay (Jesse Eisenberg) for the latter.

Other key category wins included Natasha Lyonne for Best Supporting Actress in His Three Daughters; No Other Land for Best Documentary; Flow for Best Animated Film; and All We Imagine as Light for Best Foreign Language Film.

The full list of 2024 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards winners is as follows: 

BEST PICTURE
Anora
The Brutalist – WINNER
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
I Saw the TV Glow
Nickel Boys
The Substance

BEST DIRECTOR
Sean Baker, Anora
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance
RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys – WINNER
Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow

BEST ACTOR
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist – WINNER
Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
Keith Kupferer, Ghostlight

BEST ACTRESS
Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths – WINNER
Mikey Madison, Anora
Demi Moore, The Substance
Léa Seydoux, The Beast

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Yura Borisov, Anora
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain – WINNER
Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
Adam Pearson, A Different Man

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson
Ariana Grande-Butera, Wicked
Natasha Lyonne, His Three Daughters – WINNER
Margaret Qualley, The Substance
Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Anora by Sean Baker
The Brutalist by Brady Corbet & Mona Fastvold
Challengers by Justin Kurtizkes
A Real Pain by Jesse Eisenberg – WINNER
The Substance by Coralie Fargeat

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Beast by Bertrand Bonello, Guillaume Bréaud, & Benjamin Charbit
Conclave by Peter Straughan
Nickel Boys by RaMell Ross & Joslyn Barnes – WINNER
Nosferatu by Robert Eggers
Sing Sing by Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Flow – WINNER
Inside Out 2
Memoir of a Snail
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The Wild Robot

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Dahomey
Daughters
No Other Land – WINNER
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Sugarcane

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
All We Imagine as Light – WINNER
Emilia Pérez
Evil Does Not Exist
Red Rooms
The Seed of the Sacred Fig

BEST ART DIRECTION/PRODUCTION DESIGN
The Brutalist
Dune: Part Two
Nosferatu – WINNER
The Substance
Wicked

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Brutalist, Lol Crawley
Challengers, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Dune: Part Two, Greig Fraser
Nickel Boys, Jomo Fray – WINNER
Nosferatu, Jarin Blaschke

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Dune: Part Two, Jacqueline West
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Jenny Beavan – WINNER
Maria, Massimo Cantini Parrini
Nosferatu, Linda Muir
Wicked, Paul Tazewell

BEST EDITING
Anora, Sean Baker
The Brutalist, Dávid Jancsó
Challengers, Marco Costa – WINNER
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Eliot Knapman & Margaret Sixel
Nickel Boys, Nicolas Monsour

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
The Brutalist, Daniel Blumberg
Challengers, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – WINNER
Dune: Part Two, Hans Zimmer
Nosferatu, Robin Carolan
Wicked, John Powell & Stephen Schwartz
The Wild Robot, Kris Bowers

BEST USE OF VISUAL EFFECTS
Dune: Part Two
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Hundreds of Beavers
The Substance – WINNER
Wicked

MILOS STEHLIK AWARD FOR BREAKTHROUGH FILMMAKER
Mike Cheslik, Hundreds of Beavers
Vera Drew, The People’s Joker
Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine as Light
Greg Kwedar, Sing Sing
RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys – WINNER

MOST PROMISING PERFORMER
Lily Collias, Good One
Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw the TV Glow
Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing – WINNER
Adam Pearson, A Different Man

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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