Austin Film Critics Association (AFCA) go for ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ in Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress

The Austin Film Critics Association (AFCA) announced its 2018 awards today, with If Beale Street Could Talk winning Best Film, Best Director (Barry Jenkins) and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Acting award winners include Regina King as Best Supporting Actress for If Beale Street Could Talk, Richard E. Grant as Best Supporting Actor for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Ethan Hawke as Best Actor for First Reformed, and Olivia Colman as Best Actress for The Favourite. The outstanding performers in Widows garnered that film the AFCA’s first Best Ensemble award.

Founded in 2005 by Cole Dabney and Bobby McCurdy, the Austin Film Critics Association is a group dedicated to supporting the best in film, whether at the international, national, or local level. The AFCA has seen its numbers grow to more than 30 members with a diverse roster of professional film critics who regularly review movies for national television stations, daily newspapers, weekly alternatives, local radio, monthly magazines, and websites with international prominence. AFCA members vote on the year’s best in film, celebrating excellence on both sides of the camera. The outlets AFCA members represent include the Austin American-Statesman, the Austin Chronicle, Birth.Movies.Death, Cinapse, The Daily Dot, the Daily Texan, Double Toasted, DVDActive, Fandango, Film School Rejects, FirstShowing.net, Hammer to Nail, Hill Country News, Horror’s Not Dead, Junkfood Cinema, KOOP 91.7 FM Radio, Movies.com, One Of Us, ScreenCrush, Smells Like Screen Spirit, and True View Reviews.

Here is the full list of winners.

Best Film: If Beale Street Could Talk (dir: Barry Jenkins)

Best Director: Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Actress: Olivia Colman, The Favourite

Best Actor: Ethan Hawke, First Reformed

Best Supporting Actress: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Supporting Actor: Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best Ensemble: Widows

Best Original Screenplay: Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You

Best Adapted Screenplay: Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Cinematography: Alfonso Cuarón, Roma

Best Score: Jóhann Jóhannsson, Mandy

Best Editing: Tom Cross, First Man

Best Foreign-Language Film: Burning (dir: Chang-dong Lee)

Best Documentary: Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (dir: Morgan Neville)

Best Animated Film: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (dir: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman)

Best Stunts: Mission: Impossible — Fallout

Best Motion Capture/Special Effects Performance: Josh Brolin, Avengers: Infinity War

Best First Film: Eighth Grade (dir: Bo Burnham)

The Robert R. “Bobby” McCurdy Memorial Breakthrough Artist Award: Brian Tyree Henry, If Beale Street Could Talk, Widows, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Austin Film Award: Support the Girls (dir: Andrew Bujalski)

Special Honorary Award: To Bo Burnham, Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton for their brilliant collaborative work on Eighth Grade.

AFCA 2018 Top Ten Films:

1. Blindspotting
2. Eighth Grade
3. The Favourite
4. First Reformed
5. If Beale Street Could Talk
6. Roma
7. Shoplifters
8. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
9. Suspiria
10. You Were Never Really Here

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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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