2020 National Society of Film Critics awards: Nomadland wins Best Picture

Frances McDormand in Nomadland

The results are in, and the National Society of Film Critics has declared Nomadland to be 2020's best picture! A fully female-directed top three fended off competition from what appeared to be mostly (if not entirely) English-language titles in the year after Parasite's awards glories. Steve McQueen's Small Axe series featured in a couple of categories, continuing to prove popular among critics' groups with that valuable extra bit of perspective, while Ma Rainey's Black Bottom managed an agonizing second place finish in three out of four acting categories!

Best Picture

1. Nomadland

2. First Cow

3. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Best Director

1. Chloe Zhao (Nomadland)

2. Steve McQueen (Small Axe)

3. Kelly Reichardt (First Cow)

Best Actress

1. Frances McDormand (Nomadland)

2. Viola Davis (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom)

3. Sidney Flanigan (Never Rarely Sometimes Always)

Best Actor

1. Delroy Lindo (Da 5 Bloods)

2. Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom)

3. Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal)

Best Supporting Actress

1. Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm)

2. Amanda Seyfried (Mank)

3. Youn Yuh Jung (Minari)

Best Supporting Actor

1. Paul Raci (Sound of Metal)

2. Glynn Turman (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom)

3. Chadwick Boseman (Da 5 Bloods)

Best Screenplay

1. Eliza Hittman (Never Rarely Sometimes Always)

2. Jonathan Raymond and Kelly Reichardt (First Cow)

3. Charlie Kaufman (I'm Thinking of Ending Things)

Best Cinematography

1. Joshua James Richards (Nomadland)

2. Shabier Kirchner (Lovers Rock)

3. Leonardo Simoes (Vitalina Varela)

Best Nonfiction Film

1. Time

2. City Hall

3. Collective

Best Foreign-Language Film

1. Collective

2. Bacurau / Beanpole

3. Vitalina Varela

Film Heritage Award

The Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA, among America's premier repertory houses, showing arthouse movies steadily since 1953, and holding strong in continuing the time-honoured tradition of daily double features

Film Comment, founded in 1962 and currently on hiatus, which has long been the most substantial and wide-ranging American film magazine

Women Make Movies, which, since the 1970s, has been releasing daring and distinctive female-directed movies that more conventional distributors wouldn't touch