The Brutalist and Adrien Brody among New York Film Critics Circle Awards winners

The three-and-a-half hour epic stars Brody as Laszlo Toth, a visionary Hungarian Jewish architect who flees Second World War Budapest for America.

Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half hour post-war epic The Brutalist has won best film from the New York Film Critics Circle, while its lead Adrien Brody won best actor.

The win notches an early awards season victory for one of autumn’s most-talked about films.

The Brutalist, which A24 will release on December 20, stars Brody as Laszlo Toth, a visionary Hungarian Jewish architect who flees Second World War Budapest for America.

Filmmaker and photographer RaMell Ross with the best director award for Nickel Boys during The Gothams Film Awards at Cipriani Wall Street in New York (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Ross won for directing and the film’s director of photography, Jomo Fray, took best cinematography honours.

Nickel Boys, which opens next week, is shot largely from a first-person perspective in telling the story, adapted from Colson Whitehead’s novel, of two black teenagers at an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

The critics group, which last year awarded Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon best film, will hand out awards in a ceremony on January 8.

– Full list of 2024 New York Film Critics Circle winners:

Best film: The Brutalist

Best director: RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys

Best actress: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths

Best actor: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Best screenplay: Sean Baker, Anora

Best supporting actress: Carol Kane, Between The Temples

Best supporting actor: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Best international film: All We Imagine As Light

Best non-fiction film: No Other Land

Best cinematography: Jomo Fray, Nickel Boys

Best first film: Janet Planet

Best animated film: Flow

Special award: To Save And Project: The MoMA International Festival Of Film Preservation