'Parasite' named Best Picture by Los Angeles Film Critics Circle (LAFCA)

Erik Anderson December 8, 2019

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association have chosen Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite as the best film of 2019, also giving it Best Director and Best Supporting Actor, the first critics mention of Song Kang Ho.

Recent winners of LAFCA’s top prize include Roma, Call Me by Your Name, Moonlight, Spotlight, Boyhood, Her/Gravity and Amour, all of which went on to Academy Award nominations for Best Picture (with Moonlight and Spotlight winning).

Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory) repeated his New York win in Best Actor with one here, making him the bi-coastal choice of 2019. Pain and Glory was also selected as the Best Foreign Language Film of the year, in a vote that takes place after Best Picture so that they don’t repeat.

Voting for LAFCA (and NYFCC) happens in multiple rounds, which can often result in some surprising choices. Best Actress seemed a category that took a lot of debating as it resulted in a left-field surprise win for Mary Kay Place’s subtle and devastating work in Kent Jones’s Diane from IFC Films. Place is also nominated for a Spirit Award for her performance in Diane.

Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers) won her first critics award in supporting actress, besting runner-up Zhao Shuzhen of The Farewell. Noah Baumbach’s script for Marriage Story won Best Screenplay. I Lost My Body was the only other film than Parasite and Pain and Glory to win more than one award; it took home Animated Film and Music/Score.

Here is the full list of LAFCA winners with runners-up.

Best Picture: PARASITE (Runner-up: THE IRISHMAN)
Best Director: Bong Joon Ho, PARASITE (Runner-up: Martin Scorsese, THE IRISHMAN)
Best Actor: Antonio Banderas, PAIN AND GLORY (Runner-up: Adam Driver, MARRIAGE STORY)
Best Actress: Mary Kay Place, DIANE (Runner-up: Lupita Nyong’o, US)
Best Supporting Actor: Song Kang Ho, PARASITE (Runner-up: Joe Pesci, THE IRISHMAN)
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lopez, HUSTLERS (Runner-up: Zhao Shuzhen, THE FAREWELL)
Best Screenplay: Noah Baumbach, MARRIAGE STORY (Runner-up: Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won, PARASITE)
Best Editing: Todd Douglas Miller, APOLLO 11 (Runner-up: Ronald Bronstein & Benny Safdie, UNCUT GEMS)
Best Cinematography: Claire Mathon, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE and ATLANTICS (Runner-up: Roger Deakins, 1917)
Best Production Design: Barbara Ling, ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD (Runner-up: Ha Jun Lee, PARASITE)
Best Music/Score: Dan Levy, I LOST MY BODY (Runner-up: Thomas Newman, 1917)
Best Animated Film: I LOST MY BODY (Runner-up: TOY STORY 4)
Best Documentary Film: AMERICAN FACTORY (Runner-up: APOLLO 11)
Best Foreign Language Film: PAIN AND GLORY (Runner-up: PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE)
New Generation Award: Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails, THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO
Career Achievement Award: Elaine May
Douglas Edwards Prize for Experimental Film: Ja’Tovia Gary’s THE GIVERNY DOCUMENT

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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.