Atlanta Film Critics Circle Announces 2023 Winners: ‘Oppenheimer’ Wins Big

The 2023 Atlanta Film Critics Circle winners have been announced!

For the seventh year, the 34 voting members of Atlanta’s only dedicated city-specific critics group, the Atlanta Film Critics Circle, have awarded their top films of the year. And it’s Oppenheimer that is the big winner!

Oppenheimer Wins Eight Awards

Sweeping in half of this year’s categories, Oppenheimer won eight awards, including Best Film of 2023. The film, which is a biographical thriller, portrays the life of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the film also won Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema), Best Ensemble, Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan), and Best Score (Ludwig Göransson).

Many of the top 10 films selected by the Atlanta Film Critics Circle this year skillfully blended engaging storytelling with a look into societal problems that have persisted for many years.

“It’s always hard to narrow down our favorite films of the year, but this year felt particularly tough thanks to a plethora of incredible options,” said AFCC member Devindra Hardawar, Senior Editor at Engadget and co-host of The Filmcast. “In the same year, we saw Barbie reckon with toxic masculinity and the limits of living in a patriarchal society, and we also saw films explore the evil of building the atomic bomb and Native American genocide.”

Barbenheimer: Barbie Also Recognized in AFCC’s Top 10 Films  of 2023

In a year marked by continuous wars, worker strikes, and significant improvements in artificial intelligence, Oppenheimer presents a scary reminder of what can happen when we chase technological advancement without thinking about the possible adverse outcomes. The film became culturally important not just for its story but also because it was part of a celebration of going to the movies. It was released simultaneously with Greta Gerwig’s popular and critically acclaimed movie, Barbie. Instead of causing competition at the box office, the two films being released together led to an unexpected double-feature at the theatre called “Barbenheimer.” Barbie is also one of the AFCC’s top films of the year.

So, it seems appropriate that the competition for Best Supporting Actor ended in a tie. Ryan Gosling won for his role as Ken in Barbie and Robert Downey Jr. received the award for playing the character Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer.

Josh Sewell, a member of the AFCC advisory board, said that the vote-counting committee had to count votes multiple times in some categories because the competition was so close. This included the Best Supporting Actor category, which almost ended in a three-way tie.

“Only a handful of votes separated the back half of our Top 10, which speaks to the overall quality of the filmmakers and performers,” Sewell notes. “That seems fitting in a year when actors and writers were forced to strike in order to prove how valuable their work is to the industry.”

Lily Gladstone’s Double Win for Killers of the Flower Moon

Rather than splitting the vote, actress Lily Gladstone won it twice, securing both Best Lead Actress and Best Breakthrough Performer for her work in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

“Lily Gladstone, the AFCC’s choice for both Best Actress and Breakthrough Performer, is the heart and soul of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon,” said AFCC member Curt Holman, film columnist for Creative Loafing. “As the film documents a murderous conspiracy striking the Osage nation in the 1920s, Gladstone infuses her character with dignity and a complicated emotional life that transcends potential clichés as a victim.”

Some other notable winners this year are director Celine Song’s Past Lives, which won the Best First Feature award. Da’Vine Joy Randolph got the Best Supporting Actress award for her role in The Holdovers. The French movie, The Anatomy of a Fall, won the Best International Feature award. Plus, John Wick: Chapter 4 received the second Best Stunt Work award ever given by AFCC.

AFCC member Nsenga Burton, Ph.D., Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Burton Wire, said the winners signaled a year for large collaborative efforts, sometimes at the expense of smaller, character-driven films. “As you can see from the list, ensemble films were the big winners this year for AFCC,” she said. “But I’m excited to see breakout star Lily Gladstone and screenwriters and filmmakers like Celine Song and Cord Jefferson make the cut.”

Check out the full list of this year’s winners below.

2023 Atlanta Film Critics Circle Winners

BEST FILM:

Oppenheimer

TOP 10 FILMS:

(Ranked from first place to tenth place)

1. Oppenheimer

2. Killers of the Flower Moon

3. The Holdovers

4. Past Lives

5. Barbie

6. May December

7. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

8. American Fiction

9. Anatomy of a Fall

10. Poor Things

BEST LEAD ACTOR:

Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

BEST LEAD ACTRESS:

Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

TIE – Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer; Ryan Gosling, Barbie

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST:

Oppenheimer

BEST DIRECTOR:

Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

BEST SCREENPLAY:

Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

BEST DOCUMENTARY:

Still: A Michael J. Fox Story

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE:

Anatomy of a Fall (France)

BEST ANIMATED FILM:

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:

Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:

Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer

BEST STUNT WORK:

John Wick: Chapter 4

AFCC Special Award for BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMER:

Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon

AFCC Special Award for BEST FIRST FEATURE FILM:

Celine Song, Past Lives

About the Atlanta Film Critics Circle

Co-founded by longtime Atlanta film critics Felicia Feaster and Michael Clark in 2017, the Atlanta Film Critics Circle is an attempt to fill a void in the local film community and in the representation of Atlanta’s media on the national stage. The AFCC is supported by its Advisory Board and longtime critics Jason Evans, Will Leitch, Hannah Lodge, Michael McKinney, Kyle Pinion, and Josh Sewell.

Composed of a dynamic mix of 34 Atlanta-based critics working in newspaper, magazine, and online journalism, the AFCC’s mission is to establish a national presence for a film critics group in Atlanta and to foster a vibrant film culture in Atlanta, already home to an exploding film industry production presence.

Members (critics living in and currently writing for global, national, regional, and Atlanta metro area outlets) of AFCC voted on December 3, 2023, for the group’s annual awards.