Rebecca Hall’s Passing was awarded the honor of Best Movie About Women at the Women Film Critics Circle (WFCC), 2021 awards, along with Best Screen Couple for Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson. The film based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 book, Passing, stars Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson as two light-skinned Black women, one of whom passes for white.
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) named Drive My Car directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi as Best Picture of the Year, along with Best Screenplay. Other awards went to Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) for Best Documentary along with Best Editing; and Best Film Not in the English Language went to Petite Maman.
Portland Critics Association honored David Lowery’s The Green Knight with the award for Best Picture at their first annual awards. Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog picked up the other top honors, winning the award for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch.
The Phoenix Critics Circle awarded their top honor of Best Picture of 2021 to The Power of Dog, along with Best Director for Jane Campion, Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch, Best Supporting Actress for Kirsten Dunst and Best Score. Other awards went to Licorice Pizza for Best Comedy Film, Titane for Best Horror Film, Drive My Car for Best Foreign Language Film and Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) for Best Documentary.
SFFILM presented its SF Honors Award for achievement in filmmaking to Award-winning Director Joe Wright’s Cyrano, the 124-year old drama reimagined as a musical by Screenwriter Erica Schmidt, starring Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. The film screened to a live audience, in partnership with UAR and MGM, at San Francisco’s famed Roxie Theater. The SF Honors Award was presented to the filmmakers and cast virtually ahead of their participation in live post-screening Q&A.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, and Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II took the top spots among films released in 2021 on Film Comment’s annual end-of-year survey. Of the films that screened at festivals worldwide but have not announced stateside distribution, Claire Simon’s I Want To Talk About Duras, Ted Fendt’s Outside Noise, and Kyoshi Sugita’s Haruhara-san’s Recorder received the top rankings.
Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s star-studded parody about the end of the world starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, and many more, is the 2021 recipient of the SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Prize, an award that celebrates the compelling depiction of scientific themes or characters in a narrative feature film.
Whistler Film Festival (WFF) and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ) announced the winners of this year’s AWFJ EDA Awards at the 21st edition of the Whistler Film Festival .
Academy Award® winning actress Nicole Kidman will receive the Career Achievement Award at the Palm Springs International Film Awards for her performance in Being the Ricardos. The Film Awards will take place in-person on January 6, 2022 at the Palm Springs Convention Center, with the festival running through January 17, 2022.
Beanie Feldstein, Regina Hall and Naomi Watts announced the nominations for the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards. Zola lead the field with 7 nominations including Best Feature, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Female Lead and Best Supporting Male. The Novice scored 5 nominations including Best Feature, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Female Lead and Best Supporting Female.
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced the annual selection of 25 movies to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for 2021. Selected for their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage, the newest selections include major roles for Jennifer Lopez and Cicely Tyson, extraordinary animated features, comedy and music, and films that took on racially-motivated violence against people of color decades ago.
