The National Society of Film Critics has chosen Chloe Zhao's low-budget debut feature, The Rider, as best picture of 2018.
Director Alfonso Cuaron's black-and-white Roma period piece set in modern Mexico won the most awards - as best picture runner-up, best foreign-language film and for best cinematography. Cuaron also got the award for best director.
The society of leading movie critics voted for Olivia Colman as best actress in The Favourite, and Ethan Hawke as best actor in First Reformed.
The top accolade for best supporting actor went to Steve Yeun of Burning, while Regina King of If Beale Street Could Talk nabbed best supporting actress. About 40 of the society's 64 members voted.
Best screenplay went to The Death of Stalin, and best non-fiction film to Minding the Gap.
The society was founded in 1966, electing its voting critics from newspapers and other major US media outlets. The 53rd annual awards were hosted by New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Justin Chang, the society's chairman and the Los Angeles Times' film critic, told The Associated Press that 2018 yielded "an embarrassment of riches" among new movies, but The Rider stood out among them - a contemporary western drama shot in the badlands of South Dakota.
There, a family living in a trailer against the backdrop of the rodeo circuit struggles with autism, brain damage from a bronc riding competition, drinking and gambling - but somehow endures.
The film, directed by a Beijing-born woman who was educated in the United States and lives here, "is a mixture of documentary realism and fiction," Chang said. "She uses nonprofessional actors in a way that's intimate and organic; it's a heartbreaking movie with a lot of staying power."
He noted that the society does not base its choices either on a film's box office or its budget. "We care about the quality of the movies."
Australian Associated Press
