Drive My Car sped away from this year’s National Society of Film Critics awards with four big wins, cementing its ascendant road through awards season, EW reports.
The Japanese film received the prizes for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, as well as Best Actor for its star Hidetoshi Nishijima, according to the report.
The movie was also recently named the best film of 2021 by the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, making it the first movie since 2010’s The Social Network to receive top honours from all three major film critic groups. It was also among EW’s top
10 best movies of the year, with critic Leah Greenblatt calling it “a gauntlet of despair, desire, and control so hauntingly lovely and immersive it’s almost spiritual.”
Other winners at the 56th edition of the NSFC’s awards included Penélope Cruz, who was named Best Actress for her performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers; Ruth Negga, who took home Best Supporting Actress for Passing; and the animated documentary Flee, which won Best Nonfiction Film. Per the group’s rules, no award for Best Foreign-Language Film was given after Drive My Car was named Best Picture.
The NSFC, which is made up of 60 of the country’s most prominent movie critics, has chosen the same Best Picture as the Academy Awards for two years running, naming Parasite and Nomadland the best films of 2019 and 2020, respectively.
