The Austin Film Critics Association Announce their 2020 Award Winners

Including Jon’s Top 10 of 2020

With Cinapse being primarily based out of Austin, we like to keep our fingers on the pulse of the local film related entities and events. We’re also very proud to have several of our contributors count themselves as card carrying members of the Austin Film Critics Association (AFCA), myself included. In previous years, the group has been labelled as “wildly contrarian”and that continues in 2020. What other groups lists include eclectic films such as The Invisible Man, Boys State, The 40-Year Version, Miss Juneteenth, and Greenland!

You can checkout their nominees for 2020, and their winners announcement for full details, or checkout the released info below, along with my own personal top ten for 2021.




I always like to throw in my own personal Top Ten this time of year. 2020 was a tumultuous time for the film industry, but there was still some fantastic releases, and some exciting new voices that emerged, most notably in terms of diversity and female representation. A trend I hope continues.

  1. Minari
  2. Swallow
  3. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
  4. Nomadland
  5. Promising Young Woman
  6. Sound of Metal
  7. First Cow
  8. Emma
  9. Palm Springs
  10. The Personal History of David Copperfield

Honorable Mentions: Another Round, The Assistant, Da 5 Bloods, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, One Night in Miami.

Honorable Mention for a Film I saw, kinda was released and then wasn’t, and then was at the start of 2021: Saint Maud.

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