Music City Film Critics' Association Announces 2020 Winners

Nashville-based professional critics group the Music City Film Critics’ Association has cast its votes, and this year’s winners represent a diverse slate of films that were released in a most unusual year. Taking the award for 2020's Best Picture is Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, which also earned Carey Mulligan the MCFCA Best Actress award.

Aaron Sorkin’s The Trail of the Chicago 7 won awards in the categories of screenplay, supporting actor and editing. The critics recognized the late Chadwick Boseman for his role in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

In an especially satisfying turn, the association awarded Nashville native William Tyler with the Jim Ridley Award. The award — named for the Scene’s late editor and film critic Jim Ridley, who died in 2016 — recognizes a Nashville artist or film that best represents our city. Tyler composed the score of Kelly Reichardt’s devastatingly beautiful drama First Cow. Wrote Scene editor D. Patrick Rodgers in last year’s Best of Nashville issue: “Using meditative fingerpicked guitars — and a little bit of dulcimer — the musician crafted a placid, evocative background for Reichardt’s tale of friendship and struggle in the 19th-century Pacific Northwest.” William, you make us so proud.

Here’s the full list of awards.

Best Picture: Promising Young Woman

Best Director: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland

Best Actor: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Best Actress: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman

Best Supporting Actor: Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Best Supporting Actress (tie): Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm; Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari

Best Acting Ensemble (tie): Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; One Night in Miami

Best Animated Feature: Soul

Best Foreign Language Film: Another Round

Best Documentary: The Social Dilemma

Best Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Best Song: "Speak Now" by Sam Ashworth, Leslie Odom Jr., One Night in Miami

Best Score: Ludwig Göransson, Tenet

Best Cinematography: Joshua James Richard, Nomadland

Best Editing (tie): Andy Canny, The Invisible Man; Alan Baumgarten, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Best Production Design: Donald Graham Burt, Mank

The Jim Ridley Award: William Tyler, composer, First Cow