The Power of the Dog was the big winner at the 42nd annual London Critics' Circle Film Awards, winning four major awards at the group's virtual awards ceremony from The May Fair Hotel on Sunday night. Jane Campion's acclaimed queer Western was crowned the Film of the Year, while Campion herself was named Director of the Year. The film's stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee won Actor and Supporting Actor of the Year, respectively for their performances as secretive, psychologically duelling rivals on a 1920s Montana ranch. It is Campion's second film to take the Circle's top honour, 28 years after The Piano triumphed in 1994.
Though The Power of the Dog dominated proceedings, three other films took a pair of awards each. Drive My Car, Japanese auteur Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's meditative drama on grief, companionship and Chekhov, won Foreign Language Film of the Year, while Hamaguchi and co-writer Takamasa Oe took the Screenwriter of the Year prize.
Joanna Hogg's cinematic self-portrait The Souvenir Part II was named British/Irish Film of the Year - two years after its predecessor took the same honour - while it was one of three films, along with Memoria and The French Dispatch, for which Tilda Swinton received the British/Irish Actress of the Year award. Actor-turned-director Rebecca Hall's delicately nuanced racial drama Passing earned her the Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker award, as well as Supporting Actress of the Year for Ruth Negga's challenging performance as a white-passing Black woman in 1920s New York City.
Actress of the Year went to Olivia Colman for her layered turn as a conflicted mother reflecting on her past in Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter; it's Colman's third award from the Circle, having previously won for Tyrannosaur and The Favourite. Another previous winner, Andrew Garfield, won the British/Irish Actor of the Year award for his varied performances in Tick, Tick... Boom!, The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Mainstream. And 11-year-old Woody Norman rounded out the acting winners with the Young British/Irish Performer prize for his remarkable turn opposite Joaquin Phoenix in C'mon C'mon.
Documentary of the Year went to musician and filmmaker Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson for his archival musical immersion Summer of Soul, while this year's multi-disciplinary Technical Achievement Award went to the visual effects team of Denis Villeneuve's dazzling sci-fi epic Dune. Mitch Kalisa's Play It Safe, a powerful reflection on performance and prejudice, won the British/Irish Short Film award.
