London Film Critics winners: ‘The Power of the Dog’ rules, Netflix takes all four top acting awards

Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog continued its critics’ reign this season, winning four awards from the London Film Critics Circle (LFCC) including Film of the Year and Director of the Year.

The film also won Lead Actor of the Year (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Supporting Actor of the Year (Kodi Smit-McPhee), while two other Netflix properties, The Lost Daughter and Passing, won Lead Actress (Olivia Colman) and Supporting Actress (Ruth Negga), respectively, making a clean sweep of the acting prizes.

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car was a double winner, for Foreign Language Film of the Year and Screenwriter of the Year, which he shared with Takamasa Oe. Passing also picked up a second award, for director Rebecca Hall, winning the Philip French Award for Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker. The Body of Work prizes for actor and actress went to Andrew Garfield and Tilda Swinton. Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II won the Attenborough Award for British/Iris Film of the Year — two years after its part one won the same honor. 

Here is the complete list of winners from the 42nd London Critics’ Circle Film Awards, which took place virtually on the London Critics’ Circle YouTube channel, eschewing an in-person event, which is set to take place later this year.

FILM OF THE YEAR
Belfast
Drive My Car
Dune
Licorice Pizza
The Lost Daughter
Memoria
The Power of the Dog – WINNER
The Souvenir Part II
Titane
West Side Story

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR
Drive My Car – WINNER
The Hand of God
Petite Maman
Titane
The Worst Person in the World

DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR
Flee
Gunda
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
Summer of Soul – WINNER
The Velvet Underground

The Attenborough Award for BRITISH/IRISH FILM OF THE YEAR
After Love
Belfast
The Green Knight
Limbo
The Souvenir Part II – WINNER

DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR
Jane Campion – The Power of the Dog – WINNER
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi – Drive My Car
Joanna Hogg – The Souvenir Part II
Céline Sciamma – Petite Maman
Denis Villeneuve – Dune

SCREENWRITER OF THE YEAR
Paul Thomas Anderson – Licorice Pizza
Wes Anderson – The French Dispatch
Jane Campion – The Power of the Dog
Maggie Gyllenhaal – The Lost Daughter
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe – Drive My Car – WINNER

LEAD ACTRESS OF THE YEAR
Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter – WINNER
Penélope Cruz – Parallel Mothers
Renate Reinsve – The Worst Person in the World
Joanna Scanlan – After Love
Kristen Stewart – Spencer

LEAD ACTOR OF THE YEAR
Benedict Cumberbatch – The Power of the Dog – WINNER
Adam Driver – Annette
Andrew Garfield – Tick, Tick… Boom!
Oscar Isaac – The Card Counter
Daniel Kaluuya – Judas and the Black Messiah

SUPPORTING ACTRESS OF THE YEAR
Jessie Buckley – The Lost Daughter
Ariana DeBose – West Side Story
Kirsten Dunst – The Power of the Dog
Rita Moreno – West Side Story
Ruth Negga – Passing – WINNER

SUPPORTING ACTOR OF THE YEAR
Richard Ayoade – The Souvenir Part II
Ciarán Hinds – Belfast
Jesse Plemons – The Power of the Dog
Kodi Smit-McPhee – The Power of the Dog – WINNER
Jeffrey Wright – The French Dispatch

BRITISH/IRISH ACTRESS OF THE YEAR (for body of work)
Jessie Buckley – The Lost Daughter
Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter/Mothering Sunday/Ron’s Gone Wrong/The Mitchells vs The Machines/The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
Ruth Negga – Passing/Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché
Joanna Scanlan – After Love
Tilda Swinton – Memoria/The Souvenir Part II/The French Dispatch – WINNER

BRITISH/IRISH ACTOR OF THE YEAR (for body of work)
Riz Ahmed – Encounter
Adeel Akhtar – Ali & Ava/The Nest/The Electrical Life of Louis Wain/Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
Benedict Cumberbatch – The Power of the Dog/
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain/The Courier
Andrew Garfield – Tick, Tick… Boom!/The Eyes of Tammy Faye/Mainstream – WINNER
Stephen Graham – Boiling Point/Venom: Let There Be Carnage

The Philip French Award for BREAKTHROUGH BRITISH/IRISH FILMMAKER
Prano Bailey-Bond – Censor
Rebecca Hall – Passing – WINNER
Aleem Khan – After Love
Marley Morrison – Sweetheart
Ben Sharrock – Limbo

YOUNG BRITISH/IRISH PERFORMER
Max Harwood – Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
Jude Hill – Belfast
Emilia Jones – Coda
Daniel Lamont – Nowhere Special
Woody Norman – C’mon C’mon – WINNER

BRITISH/IRISH SHORT FILM
Diseased and Disorderly – dir. Andrew Kotting
Expensive Shit – dir. Adura Onashile
Know the Grass – dir. Sophie Littman
Play It Safe – dir. Mitch Kalisa – WINNER
Precious Hair & Beauty – dir. John Ogunmuyiwa

TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Cruella – Jenny Beavan, costumes
Dune – Paul Lambert, Tristan Myles, Brian Connor and Gerd Nefzer, visual effects – WINNER
Flee – Kenneth Ladekjær, animation
The French Dispatch – Adam Stockhausen, production design
The Green Knight – Andrew Droz Palermo, cinematography
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmão – Hélène Louvart, cinematography
Martin Eden – Fabrizio Federico and Aline Hervé, film editing
No Time to Die – Olivier Schneider, stunts
The Power of the Dog – Jonny Greenwood, music
West Side Story – Justin Peck, choreography

Photo: Kirsty Griffin/Netflix

• Author
• Recent Posts

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.

Latest posts by Erik Anderson (see all)

• 2024 North Carolina Film Critics Association (NCFCA) Nominations - December 21, 2024
• 2024 Philadelphia Film Critics Circle (PFCC) Winners: ‘Anora’ Named Best Film Among its Six Awards - December 21, 2024
• 2024 Utah Film Critics Association (UFCA) Nominations - December 21, 2024