The UK's leading film critics have unveiled the nominations for the 42nd annual London Critics' Circle Film Awards, with three films from female filmmakers coming out on top. Leading the field is veteran director Jane Campion's psychological western The Power of the Dog, which scored nine nominations. Next, with six and five nominations respectively, are first-time director Maggie Gyllenhaal's Elena Ferrante adaptation The Lost Daughter and British auteur Joanna Hogg's cine-memoir The Souvenir Part II.
More than 180 critics across print, online and broadcast media voted for this year's nominations, which were announced by British actors Joanna Vanderham and Gwilym Lee this afternoon at London's May Fair Hotel. The May Fair will also host the Circle's awards ceremony, where the winners will be announced on 6th February 2022.
After winning the Circle's Film of the Year award 28 years ago for The Piano, Campion is up for Film, Director and Screenwriter of the Year, while her film's stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Jesse Plemons are all nominated. Hogg is another returning winner, having taken the British/Irish Film of the Year prize for the first part of The Souvenir two years ago.
Joining them and The Lost Daughter in a wide-ranging Film of the Year field are Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's complex character study Drive My Car, Kenneth Branagh's autobiographical drama Belfast and Steven Spielberg’s musical reinterpretation West Side Story, which scored four nominations apiece, as well as Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi epic Dune, Paul Thomas Anderson's coming-of-age tale Licorice Pizza, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's meditative Memoria and Julia Ducournau's body-horror explosion Titane.
Actors with multiple nominations include Cumberbatch, Ruth Negga, Joanna Scanlan, Andrew Garfield and The Lost Daughter stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley - all cited in both the general and British/Irish acting races. Japanese writer-director Hamaguchi, meanwhile, is the year's most-nominated individual, contending for Film, Director, Screenwriter and Foreign Language Film of the Year.
