The London Critics Circle Awards 2023 saw TÁR and The Banshees of Inisherin named as the best films of the year, along with Nan Goldin documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and tied Foreign Language Film of the Year winners The Quiet Girl and Decision to Leave.
Martin McDonagh's tragicomedy The Banshees of Inisherin took home the most awards, winning five gongs including acting nods for Colin Farrell, Barry Keoghan, and Kerry Condon and British/Irish Film of the Year. TÁR came in second place, receiving three awards: Film of the Year, Director of the Year for Todd Field, and Actress of the Year for leading woman Cate Blanchett, who plays fictional legendary composer and conductor Lydia Tár.
"TÁR is about female experience, but it’s also beyond female experience. It’s really, really complicated and you’ve made room for that complication," Blanchett said during her acceptance speech. "Personally, it was the most freewheeling, free-form, free-flowing, exhilarating, challenging, and creatively dangerous film set that I’ve ever been on. And it was full of ambiguity and the stuff that we as a species find so hard to unpack and discuss and pin down, not only the stuff inside the systems that we work within, but inside ourselves."
Meanwhile, Florence Pugh and Bill Nighy received awards for their acting bodies of work over the past year, and Michelle Yeoh took home the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Yeoh spoke of her character Evelyn in her six-minute acceptance speech, saying: "I saw in her a hero’s journey that so many women, wives, mothers daughters go through. But what I had in most in common with her is that she never gave up. Not on love, not on kindness, and most of all, never on family."
You can see the full list of winners below.
London Critics Circle Awards winners 2023
- Film of the Year: TÁR
- Foreign Language Film of the Year: The Quiet Girl, Decision to Leave
- Documentary of the Year: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
- British/Irish Film of the Year: The Banshees of Inisherin
- Director of the Year: Todd Field (TÁR)
- Screenwriter of the Year: Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin)
- Actress of the Year: Cate Blanchett (TÁR)
- Actor of the Year: Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin)
- Supporting Actress of the Year: Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin)
- Supporting Actor of the Year: Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin)
- British/Irish Actor of the Year, for Body of Work: Florence Pugh (The Wonder, Don't Worry Darling, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish)
- British/Irish Actor of the Year, for Body of Work: Bill Nighy (Living)
- Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker: Charlotte Wells (Aftersun)
- Young British/Irish Performer: Frankie Corio (Aftersun)
- British/Irish Short Film of the Year: A Fox in the Night
- Technical Achievement Award: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
- Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film: Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
