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 entered Tuesday’s NYFCC meeting as the presumptive favorite to win, and is the critical favorite of the year as Oscar and guild voting approaches, critics didn’t toe the awards season party line in their casting picks.
Wagner Moura won Best Actor 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 Best Supporting Actor for “One Battle After Another.” Amy Madigan was named Best Supporting Actress for her role 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 award.
Netflix’s Korean sensation “KPop Demon Hunters” won Best Animated Feature. Carson Lund’s loose baseball drama “Eephus” won in the Best First Film category.
The award for non-fiction went to “My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow,” which won just one day after winning in the same category at the Gotham Awards.
“Sinners” won for motion picture, the only below-the-line category awarded 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 announced its picks for the best films of the year since 1935.
In its 90 years of existence, the NYFCC’s Best Picture picks have matched the Best Picture Oscar winner 31 times, though they’ve only done so four times this century. The two groups have been at odds since “The Artist” in 2012.
Last year, “The Brutalist” was named best film by the NYFCC. Four of the group’s winners advanced to 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 Film: “Sinners”
Best Nonfiction Film: “My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow”
Best International Film: “The Secret Agent”
Best First Film: “Eephus”
Special Prizes: Museum of the Moving Image, Screen Slate
Student Awards: London Xhudo (NYU) and Tan Zhiyuan (The New School)