Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) Awards: It’s ‘One Battle After Another’
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) has announced the winners of their 51st awards and One Battle After Another has claimed their Best Picture award, with Anderson also earning Best Director kudos.
This is Paul Thomas Anderson’s third Best Director win from LAFCA. He previously won for 2007’s There Will Be Blood and 2012’s The Master, and his second Best Picture win from the 50-year old org.
Last year, Sean Baker’s Anora topped their list, which went on to win the Best Picture Oscar, joining previous LAFCA winners The Hurt Locker (2009), Spotlight (2015), Moonlight (2016) and Parasite (2019) in the expanded Best Picture era.
Since the 2009 expansion, six LAFCA-winning directors have gone on to win the Oscar for Best Director, including Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity, Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water, Bong Joon Ho for Parasite, Chloé Zhao for Nomadland and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog. Bigelow, Zhao and Campion, the only women to win the Best Director Oscar, started their path here.
The Secret Agent was the Best Picture runner-up but won the group’s Best Film Not in the English Language award. As per the LAFCA’s rules, a film cannot win both so Best Picture is voted on before FNitEL to avoid overlap.
In the fourth year of non-gendered lead and supporting acting winners where two performances are chosen in each category (as well as two runners-up), Rose Byrne continued her dominance with a fourth win this week for her turn in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. She previous won accolades from New York, NBR and Toronto. Ethan Hawke was the co-winner for Blue Moon; he also shared a lead win with Byrne from Toronto. Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) and Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) were the runners-up.
Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value) and Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another) shared their first wins of the season in the supporting category with Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (Sentimental Value) and Andrew Scott (Blue Moon) named runners-up.
My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow continued its winning week; picking up the Gotham on Monday, NYFF on Tuesday and now LA critics today.
Philip Kaufman is the recipient of this year’s Career Achievement Award. A Special Citation to Judy Kim of Gardena Cinema, a historic 800-seat, single-screen movie palace that has operated as an independent cinema and beacon of community since the Kim family took ownership in 1976.
“Intrepid doesn’t even begin to describe a director who, among his many considerable achievements, gave Indiana Jones his first assignment and inspired the NC-17 rating,” said LAFCA President Robert Abele. “A criminally underappreciated director, Philip Kaufman could never be pigeonholed, from his early days absorbing the independent spirit of homegrown DIY-ers and the European New Wave, to his cool, vivid command of genre in the ’70s, followed by a handful of uncompromising historical epics, including The Right Stuff and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, that belied anybody’s notion that American filmmakers couldn’t be versatile, intelligent and entertaining about big ideas. The L.A. Film Critics Association is immensely proud to be honoring this dyed-in-the-wool iconoclast.”
Founded in 1975, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association has long maintained a reputation for championing bold, uncompromising filmmaking and broadening the industry’s understanding of what constitutes excellence.
LAFCA winners will be honored alongside Kaufman at the organization’s awards event, to be held Saturday, January 10, 2026, at the Biltmore Hotel.
Here is the list of winners and runners-up.
Best Picture: One Battle After Another
Runner-up: The Secret Agent
Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Runner-up: Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Leading Performances: Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
Runners-up: Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme and Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
Supporting Performances: Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value, and Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
Runners-up: Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value and Andrew Scott, Blue Moon
Best Screenplay: It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
Runner-up: Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor)
Best Animation: Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Runner-up: KPop Demon Hunters
Best Cinematography: Adolpho Veloso, Train Dreams
Runner-up: Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Sinners
Best Film Editing: Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Runner-up: Andy Jurgensen, One Battle After Another
Best Production Design: Hannah Beachler, Sinners
Runner-up: Tamara Deverell, Frankenstein
Best Music Score: Kangding Ray, Sirāt
Runner-up: Ludwig Göransson, Sinners
Best Film Not in the English Language: The Secret Agent
Runner-up: It Was Just an Accident
Best Documentary/Non-Fiction Film: My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow
Runner-up: The Perfect Neighbor
New Generation Award: Eva Victor — Sorry, Baby
Douglas Edwards Experimental Film Prize: Albert Serra, Afternoons of Solitude; Special Award: Thom Anderson, for his body of work
Career Achievement Award: Philip Kaufman
Special Citation: Judy Kim, Gardena Cinema
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), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) 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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