Atlanta Film Critics Circle Honors Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Spider-Verse With 2023 Awards

2023 is coming to a close so its time to start looking back on the year in film with accolades in mind, and one movie in particular is clearly the runaway favorite. One of the first critics groups to announce their awards this year is the Atlanta Film Critics Circle (of which I am a voting member), and our collective is made up of 34 Atlanta-based critics working in newspaper, magazine, and online journalism. Our annual Top 10 list of feature films has been revealed today along with our selections in a variety of other categories. Though one might normally expect exclusively “awards bait” movies to dominate in an awards group like this, the Atlanta Film Critics Circle’s 2023 winners brings in plenty of blockbusters as well.

In addition to the Top 10 movies of the year, our ballot also includes specific categories for those in front of and behind the camera as well as our two annual special awards, the AFCC Special Awards for Best Breakthrough Performer and Best First Feature Film. If you’ve been paying attention to the 2023 movie landscape then it shouldn’t surprsie you that the two movies at the center of the Barbeinheimer craze, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, were major winners this year. Though Oppenheimer was named our Best Film, in addition to a few other wins, the two movies actually tied in a key category, Best Supporting Actor.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse not only won our Best Animated Feature award for the year but was listed on our Top 10 Films of the year. Finally, in our second-ever Best Stunt Work award the winner was none other than John Wick: Chapter Four.

You can find the full list of Atlanta Film Critics Circle 2023 winners below!

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