As we always do in honor of the Oscars, we are pleased to announce the 6th Annual Defacto Film Awards. This year, we did things even more democratically as opposed to doing separate ballots in previous years. The voting was not only done by rank-order voting by the fellow Defacto staff, which includes chief film critic Robert J. Butler and reviewers Noah Damron and Michael Powell. This year, we also ended up inviting our fellow VIP readers, bloggers, and podcasters to the voting board, which includes Adam Ferenz, Sammy Juliano, Patricia Perry, and Aaron White. Here are our picks for the Best of 2023 nominees and winners in 21 categories. We decided to nominate ten best picture nominees this year to match the Academy Award best picture nominees. We also selected the top five picks in the following major categories: Best Director, Best Lead Actor, Best Lead Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Documentary, Best Animated Feature, Best International Film, Best Original Score, and more. We also added a new category this year: Best Stunts.
✓*Indicates Winner
Best Picture
Best Director
Best Actor
Courtesy Focus Features
Best Actress
Courtesy Apple Films
Best Supporting Actor
Courtesy Netflix
Winner – Charles Melton [May December] ✓
Courtesy Focus Features
Winner – Da’Vine Joy Randolph [The Holdovers] ✓
Danielle Brooks [The Color Purple]
Jodie Foster [Nyad]
Rachel McAdams [Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret]
Julianne Moore [May December]
Best Original Screenplay
Courtesy Focus Features
Winner – The Holdovers [David Hemingson] ✓
Anatomy of a Fall [Justine Triet and Arthur Hirari]
Fallen Leaves [Aki Kurasmaki]
May December [Samy Burch]
Past Lives [Celine Song]
Best Adapted Screenplay
Courtesy A24
Winner – The Zone of Interest [Jonathan Glazer] ✓
Killers of the Flower Moon [Martin Scorsese and Eric Roth]
Oppenheimer [Christopher Nolan]
Poor Things [Tony McNamara]
Priscilla [Sofia Coppola]
Best International Feature
Courtesy A24
Winner – The Zone of Interest ✓
Anatomy of a Fall
The Boy and the Heron
Fallen Leaves
Godland
Best Animated Feature
Courtesy GKIDS
Winner – The Boy and the Heron ✓
Elemental
Nimona
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Best Documentary Feature
Courtesy Kino Lorber
Winner – Four Daughters ✓
20 Days in Mariupol
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
Best Editing
Courtesy Universal Pictures
Winner – Oppenheimer ✓
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest
Best Cinematography
Courtesy Universal Pictures
Winner – Oppenheimer ✓
Godland
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest
Winner – Oppenheimer ✓
The Boy and the Heron
The Killers of the Flower Moon
Past Lives
Poor Things
Best Sound
Winner – The Zone of Interest ✓
Godzilla Minus One
Maestro
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Oppenheimer
Best Production Design
Courtesy Searchlight
Winner – Poor Things ✓
Asteroid City
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Winner – Poor Things ✓
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Winner – Poor Things ✓
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Priscilla (26 votes)
Winner – Godzilla Minus One ✓
The Creator
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Poor Things
Winner – Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One ✓
The Creator
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
John Wick: Chapter 4
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Love to see it
Great choices
Awesome Job!!! Guys!!!
Glad to see Alexander Payne get some love for “The Holdovers”! His direction really made the film for me personally along with Joy Randolph’s moving performance. I won’t lie though, I personally didn’t LOVE the other performances like everyone else did. I thought they were very good but that was it for me. Love to see the love for Poor Things and Godzilla in the other categories! Love to see “Asteroid City” in for production design! That movie was robbed for an Oscar nomination this year. I also liked DeNiro for best supporting actor this year. The evilest character Scorsese has ever filmed imo. I also liked “Anatomy of a Fall” For original screenplay and editing.
A lot of interesting choices.
Godzilla Minus One for Best Visual Effects should be the clarion call to Hollywood that they need to change their way of abusing artists.
The Holdovers for the big awards…I’m on board.
The Holdovers was definitely a great movie. For me personally both that and The Zone of Interest were my 2 favorite films of the year. Both completely opposite movies but weirdly enough one is Yin to the other’s Yang. People speak of Barbieheimer as the year’s companion pieces but mine was The Zone of Holdovers. One film filled with hope, the other with despair.
Boy, you sure liked the Holdovers! But you completely ignored American Fiction!
Good selections. Poor things would be my pick for a lot of stuff along with zone of interest. Saw both in January and they knocked me sideways. I also saw the holdovers and I loved that as well so can’t argue with those picks.