The Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards has named Justine Triet’s mystery thriller Anatomy of a Fall as the best movie of the year.
The French courtroom drama — which is competing at the Oscars in five categories — also earned Sandra Hüller the best female actor crown for her star turn in the Cannes Palme d’Or award winner. Anatomy of a Fall beat out Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest for the best picture prize.
Nolan did, however, pick up the best director honor for Oppenheimer, while his biopic about the father of the A-bomb led to Robert Downey Jr. nabbing the best supporting actor prize. The other multiple winner is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, which on the acting front earned Paul Giamatti the best male actor honor for his role as a curmudgeonly classics instructor and Da’Vine Joy Randolph the best supporting female actor trophy for playing the school cook whose son was killed in Vietnam after graduating.
Glazer’s harrowing Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest was named the best international film in a non-English category, while the Vancouver critics also gave the best screenplay trophy to Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach for Barbie, and the best documentary of 2023 was Nisha Pahuja’s Oscar-nominated film To Kill a Tiger.
Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Nyad and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things each went into the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards with two nominations, and went home empty-handed.
