2021 Women Film Critic Circle Awards Winners

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
Passing

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
The Power of the Dog – Jane Campion

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER (Screenwriting Award)
Jane Champion – The Power of the Dog

BEST ACTRESS
Kristen Stewart – Spencer

BEST ACTOR
Will Smith – King Richard

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
Titane

BEST DOCUMENTARY BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES
King Richard

BEST ANIMATED FEMALE
Mirabel – Encanto

BEST SCREEN COUPLE
Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson – Passing

BEST TV SERIES
The Handmaid’s Tale
Yellowjackets

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD
Last Night in Soho

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD
Passing

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD
Passing

ACTING AND ACTIVISM AWARD
Dolly Parton

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Betty White

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower rack in her bathroom, to make it look like suicide. He later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.