‘One Battle After Another’ Named Best Film of 2025 by New York Film Critics Circle

The New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), the most important critics group in the country, announced their 2025 winners. Their Best Film winners this decade have been “First Cow,” “Drive My Car,” Tár and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and “The Brutalist.”

We can now add Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” to that list as it took home the top prize. The most predictable choice, and one which will no doubt have a domino effect with the rest of this year’s awards season. This is actually the first time a PTA had won the NYFCC’s Best Film award.

The rest of the the winners were fairly well-spread with a total of ten films honored with a prize.

Wagner Moura came a step closer to nabbing the first Oscar nomination of his career by winning NYFCC’s Best Actor award for his performance in ‘The Secret Agent.’ New York opted to give Moura the prize over such stalwart work from Leonardo DiCaprio (‘One Battle After Another’), Timothée Chalamet (‘Marty Supreme’), and Ethan Hawke (‘Blue Moon’). In fact, Moura is the first Latin actor to win Best Actor in the organization’s 90-year history.

Rose Byrne deservedly won Best Actress for her work in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” What more can I say about this performance and this film? She deserves to sweep every acting award to come.

And how about Benicio del Toro taking Supporting Actor? It can be seen as a direct message to the Academy: don’t forget about this guy. Sean Penn has been getting all the Oscar buzz for his performance, but del Toro is brilliant as Sensei and deserves a nomination as well.

The same Oscar boost can be applied to Amy Madigan, who won the NYFCC’s Supporting Actress award for her delightfully unhinged work in ‘Weapons.’ No more deserving performance. Teyana Taylor (‘One Battle After Another’) was the front-runner for this category, and she’s likely still the top actress to win the Oscar, but Madigan is rising.

Meanwhile, “The Secret Agent” won Best International Film over Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” which can, I guess, be seen as an upset, but Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film is the better one and fully deserves the love NYFCC bestowed upon it.

Panahi did win Best Director, which came only 24 hours after an Iranian court sentenced the filmmaker to a year in prison. Was NYFCC awarding Panahi the directing prize more a show of solidarity? Who knows, but we all figured Panahi was going to win something today, and the timing made the recognition feel even more pointed.

It’s been such a weak year for animation that “K-pop Demon Hunters” somehow won the category. I guess the next best option would have been “Zootopia 2” or “Arco,” but “K-pop” prevails, and now it could very well win the Oscar. One of the wilder stories of the year is this film’s cultural success.

Look at that — Carson Lund’s playful and elegiac baseball movie, “Eephus,” winning Best First Film over critical darling “Sorry Baby,” is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Interesting how Julia Loktev’s 5-hour-24-minute “My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow” was named Best Documentary — besting “The Perfect Neighbor” and “Apocalypse in the Tropics.” I’ve been trying to find a way to watch Loktev’s film for months now, but to no avail, having only heard great things about its tackling of modern-day Russia.

The Best Cinematography award went to Autumn Durald for her work on “Sinners,” somewhat of a surprise given the momentum Adolpho Veloso’s work in “Train Dreams” has been getting these last few weeks.

Best Film:
“One Battle After Another”

Best Actress:
Rose Byrne (”If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”)

Best Director:
Jafar Panahi (”It Was Just An Accident”)

Best Screenplay:
“Marty Supreme”

Best Actor:
Wagner Moura (”The Secret Agent”)

Best Cinematography:
“Sinners” — Autumn Durald

Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Madigan (”Weapons”)

Best Non-Fiction Film:
“My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air in Moscow”

Best Animated Film:
“KPop Demon Hunters”

Best Supporting Actor:
Benicio del Toro (”One Battle After Another”)

Best First Film:
“Eepush” (Carson Lund)

Best International Film:
“The Secret Agent” (Kleber Mendonça Filho)