New York Film Critic Circle (NYFCC): ‘ROMA’ Best Film, Director; Regina Hall is Best Actress

The New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) has chosen ROMA as the best film of 2018 with Alfonso Cuarón also taking the prizes for Best Director and Best Cinematography.  

For his performance of a deeply troubled priest being torn apart by his past and the overwhelming dread of the world, Ethan Hawke (First Reformed) repeated his Gotham win with another Best Actor prize and the NYFCC gave us double Regina wins with Best Actress going to Regina Hall for Support the Girls, portraying a mother figure to servers as the manager of a Hooters-style restaurant and Supporting Actress to Regina King for If Beale Street Could Talk. Hall is also nominated for a Spirit Award for her performance and King won NBR earlier this week.

Paul Schrader, famed writer of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver has never even been nominated for an Oscar, won the Screenplay award for First Reformed and is quickly becoming the Academy Award frontrunner for Original Screenplay. 

Bo Burnham is on a tear with a third win for his directorial debut Eighth Grade. He won the Gotham and NBR awards earlier this week. 

Special Awards were given to Kino Classics Box Set “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers” and David Schwartz, who is stepping down as Chief Film Curator at Museum of the Moving Image after 33 years.

Last year, Lady Bird won the org’s top prize with its star, Saoirse Ronan, winning Best Actress. Call Me By Your Name‘s Timothée Chalamet won Best Actor, Willem Dafoe won Supporting Actor for The Florida Project and all were nominated in their respective categories at the Oscars. Best Director winner Sean Baker (The Florida Project) and Supporting Actress winner Tiffany Haddish (Girls Trip) did not translate their NYFCC success into Academy Award nominations.

Two of last season’s biggest Oscar winners – The Shape of Water (Best Picture, Director) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Best Actress, Supporting Actor) came up empty at the NYFCC. 

Here is the full list of winners.

Best Film: ROMA

Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón – ROMA

Best Actress: Regina Hall – Support the Girls

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 Screenplay: First Reformed (Paul Schrader)

Best Cinematography: ROMA (Alfonso Cuarón)

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

Best Non-Fiction Film: Minding the Gap (Bing Liu)

Best Foreign Language Film: Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski)

Best First Film: Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)

Special Award: Kino Classics Box Set “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers”

Special Award: David Schwartz, stepping down as Chief Film Curator at Museum of the Moving Image after 33 years

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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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