Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” was named the best film of 2025 by the New York Film Critics Circle, which announced its annual awards on Tuesday.
While the film went into the Tuesday meeting of the NYFCC as the presumed favorite to win, and is the year’s critical favorite as Oscar and guild voting approaches, the critics did not hew to the awards-season party line in their acting choices.
Wagner Moura won the Best Actor award for Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian film “The Secret Agent,” which was also named Best International Film. Rose Byrne was named Best Actress for “If I Had Legs I’d Shoot You.”
Benicio del Toro won the Best Supporting Actor award for “One Battle After Another.” Amy Madigan was named Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the horror film “Weapons.”
Iranian director Jafar Panahi won the Best Director award for “It Was Just an Accident.” “Marty Supreme” won the screenplay prize.
Netflix’s Korean sensation “KPop Demon Hunters” won Best Animated Film. Carson Lund’s loose-limbed baseball drama “Eephus” won in the Best First Film category.
The award for nonfiction film went to “My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow,” which won only one day after winning in the same category at the Gotham Awards.
“Sinners” won for cinematography, the only below-the-line category given out by the critics.
The organization consists of 47 film critics for New York-based newspapers, magazines and online publications. It is the oldest critics group in the country and has been announcing its picks for the year’s best films since 1935.
Over the 90 years of its existence, the NYFCC’s choice for best film has matched the Oscar winner for Best Picture 31 times, though they’ve done so only four times in this century. The two groups haven’t agreed since “The Artist” in 2012.
Last year, “The Brutalist” was named best film by the NYFCC. Four of the group’s winners went on to take Oscars: Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”) for supporting actor, Sean Baker (“Anora”) for original screenplay, “Flow” for animated feature and “No Other Land” for documentary.
The winners:
Best Film: “One Battle After Another”
Best Director: Jafar Panahi, “It Was Just an Accident”
Best Actor: Wagner Moura, “The Secret Agent”
Best Actress: Rose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Shoot You”
Best Supporting Actor: Benicio del Toro, “One Battle After Another”
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan, “Weapons”
Best Screenplay: “Marty Supreme”
Best Animated Film: “KPop Demon Hunters”
Best Cinematography: “Sinners”
Best Non-Fiction Film: “My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow”
Best International Film: “The Secret Agent”
Best First Film: “Eephus”
Special Awards: Museum of the Moving Image, Screen Slate
Student Prizes: London Xhudo (NYU) and Tan Zhiyuan (The New School)