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THE NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW TO ANNOUNCE 2025 AWARDS RECIPIENTS WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2025

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NBR Awards Gala to Take Place on Tuesday, January 13, 2026
in New York City

New York, NY (October 15, 2025) – The National Board of Review will announce the recipients of the 2025 NBR Awards on Wednesday, December 3, 2025. The NBR Awardees will be fêted at a gala event on Tuesday, January 13, 2026 at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City hosted by Willie Geist; host, NBC News’ Sunday TODAY and co-host, MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

The National Board of Review’s awards celebrate excellence in filmmaking with categories that include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Original and Adapted Screenplay, Best International Film, Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary, Breakthrough Performance, Directorial Debut, and Outstanding Achievement in both Cinematography and Stunt Artistry.   Additionally, they award signature honors such as the NBR Icon Award, NBR Freedom of Expression, and the William K. Everson Award for Film History.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW
Since 1909, the National Board of Review has dedicated its efforts to the support of cinema as both art and entertainment. Each year, this select group of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, professionals and academics participates in illuminating discussions with directors, actors, producers and screenwriters before announcing their selections for the best work of the year. Since first citing year-end cinematic achievements in 1929, NBR has recognized a vast selection of outstanding studio, independent, foreign-language, animated and documentary films, often propelling recipients such as Peter Farrelly’s Green Book and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road into the larger awards conversation. In addition, one of the organization’s core values is identifying new talent and nurturing young filmmakers by awarding promising talent with Directorial Debut and Breakthrough Performance awards as well as grants to rising film students. With its continued efforts to assist up-and-coming artists in completing and presenting their work, NBR honors its commitment to not just identifying the best that current cinema has to offer, but also ensuring the quality of films for future generations to come.

Join the conversation @NBRfilm

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Press Contacts:  
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Q&A with Bernhard Wenger and Albrecht Schuch

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Peacock.

Albrecht, you said rehearsal was the most challenging of your career. Why?
Albrecht Schuch: It was, without question, the hardest preparation I’ve ever faced. At first, I couldn’t find the center of the character. He felt like someone without emotions, almost as if he were absent from his own life. Gradually, through discussions and rehearsal, I realized his emotions were there but deeply hidden. He cares for others (his clients, his surroundings)… but neglects his own feelings and fears. That absence leaves him with no relationship to himself, as if he were in “parking mode” but had forgotten where the lot was.

It was unnerving. I’m used to characters who stride into a room with energy, whose presence immediately shifts the atmosphere. This man was the opposite: like an empty page, waiting for something to be written. That lack of definition drove me crazy at first, but eventually I saw it as the key. He’s a man who has given away so much of himself that he hardly knows what remains. Playing him meant learning to embody stillness and vacancy, which was both exhausting and strangely moving.

the humor isn’t there just for laughs

How much did you discuss tone beforehand?
A.S.: A great deal. Bernhard and I shared many cinematic references, so I grasped the tone of the film almost immediately after reading the script. Oddly, my first instinct wasn’t, I must play this role, but rather, I can’t wait to watch this movie. That reaction told me the project had something special… an aesthetic and emotional clarity we both understood from the outset.

Bernhard, you pre-shot the movie with storyboards and stand-ins. Why this method?
Bernhard Wenger: For me, filmmaking is all about preparation. I want to be relaxed on set, fully present for the actors. To achieve that, I shoot a rough version of the film in advance with a small camera ()sometimes even acting in it myself), alongside colleagues and the cinematographer.

It’s not about polish. It’s about testing ideas: does this shot work, does this movement make sense, does the dialogue have rhythm? Once we’ve tried it, I can refine the shot list and even edit a full mock version. That way, by the time we’re on set, I already know what feels natural and what doesn’t. If an actor says, “This doesn’t make sense,” I’ve usually discovered that earlier through rehearsal with the camera.

It also builds a shorthand with my DP. We don’t need to have long technical conversations while the actors are waiting. We already know what lens, what lighting setup. That frees me to concentrate on performance. Timing, especially with humor, benefits enormously from this process. Even something as simple as which side of a table a character walks around can feel awkward if you haven’t tried it yourself. By acting it out, I sense the rhythm of a scene, the timing of a line, or the pause before a look.

So in the end, the film exists twice: once in a strange, rough version with me in several roles, and once in the finished form. And that first version is what makes the second possible.

Tell us about the party tram sequence.
B.W.: That scene was deceptively simple on the page but very demanding in practice. You need extras, permits, a tram, and closed streets—all for a fleeting moment. Yet I was determined, because inspiration came directly from life.

One day, in a terrible mood, I was stuck at a red light and saw a party tram roll by, full of people dancing and laughing. The absurdity of it instantly shifted my perspective. I thought, this is exactly the kind of strange, joyous detail I want in the film. That clash — the grayness of an ordinary day colliding with something so oddly exuberant — captures the humor I look for.

What’s important is that it isn’t spectacle for its own sake. It’s not about staging a giant set piece. It’s about how a small, surreal detail can suddenly change the way you feel about the world. A tram filled with people partying on a weekday afternoon is funny, yes, but it’s also oddly uplifting. It takes the characters (and hopefully the audience) out of their routine and reminds them that life is unpredictable, sometimes ridiculous, and occasionally wonderful.

How did you manage humor and tone in the film?
B.W.: My sense of humor is rooted in Scandinavian cinema and British black comedy, fused with an Austrian instinct for tragedy. That mixture shaped my handwriting as a filmmaker. When I write, I don’t calculate whether an audience will laugh… I trust my instincts. If something strikes me as funny, I believe it can resonate.

But the humor isn’t there just for laughs. I want to address serious themes and still give people relief through comedy. Satire allows that balance. It’s about making space for laughter while still pointing at something painful. For me, humor always comes from tragedy. It’s what makes it human.

Too often, art-house films treat humor cynically. That’s not how I look at life. I prefer optimism, and I look at my characters with warmth. Even when they’re misguided or tragic, I want to treat them with empathy. Comedy becomes a way of reaching that empathy: you laugh at their situation, but you also recognize the fragility underneath. That’s why I love satire: it gives you the chance to speak to heavy issues and still let the audience breathe.

At what point did the mustache come in?
A.S.: The mustache was very intentional. We discussed it as a metaphor for German precision and rigidity. In Germany, people sometimes trim hedges into perfect square shapes, obsessively neat. The mustache felt like the character carrying that same rigidity on his face.

At the same time, we decided he would have no other body hair. That choice made him oddly blank, hard to pin down… like he was slipping away from any clear definition. The contrast of meticulous order and elusive identity said a great deal about who he was.

Q&A with Scarlett Johansson, June Squibb, Erin Kellyman, and Chiwetel Ejiofor

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Eleanor the Great.

Scarlett, how long have you been thinking about directing?

Scarlett Johansson: I’ve been thinking about directing since I was a kid, really, but the first time was when I was doing The Horse Whisperer, and I was working with Bob Redford and watching him command the set. He was blocking a complicated scene with our DP Bob Richardson and our first AD, and then alternately working with the actors in this really intimate way that I had never encountered before. I thought, that seems like a pretty interesting job. At that time, I figured that I would grow, and I would act until I was an adult and then I would become a director. But then as I got older, I became more interested in getting better at my job as an actor. Or at least trying to understand it in a different way and take on different challenges. Then I sort of abandoned the idea of directing because it seemed like, who would want that job? It’s problem-solving all day! But then as I began absorbing different experiences and moved into production and development, the idea of directing became more interesting again.

I just wanted to make her human

How did you get lucky enough to work with June Squibb for the lead role?

SJ: Well, June came with the script actually! Lucky for me.

June, what made you want to do this film and how did you approach the role of Eleanor?

June Squibb: I was sent the script and I immediately wanted to do it. It was something I felt was very important. Also, [screenwriter] Tory Kamen said she was going to write me a letter, but I said yes before she could give the letter to me! I immediately knew this was for me and this was a project I wanted to do. And then I was told that Scarlett was going to direct. We had a Zoom meeting and that went beautifully. I loved her. She’s very honest about everything and it was great. I knew we could do this together. I also knew it wasn’t going to be an easy thing for me to do, but I wanted to do it anyway.  

As far as approaching the character, well, in my own life I don’t like rules. So if you tell me I’m supposed to do this because I’m this age, then I say no, that’s not going to work! To me, Eleanor is extremely open with everybody. That’s how she can have that relationship with Nina. Erin [Kellyman] and I had met each other and really liked each other, so that part was easy.

You two have a wonderful chemistry on screen. How did you work to create that bond?

Erin Kellyman: Um, I think it helped that we lived in the same apartment building. I would be at June’s all the time. I would just let myself in. We had about two weeks before we started shooting, and we just hung out all the time. Then when you get to set, there’s a lot of downtime and I think in those moments you can really bond with each other.

SJ: Not that much down time! It was very efficient [laughs].

Nina sometimes seems like the most emotionally mature person in the film. What was your take on her?

EK: Initially, I could see that she had so many things that she wanted to get off her chest, and so many feelings that she really wanted to connect with somebody. She wasn’t finding that in her home life. When she met Eleanor, she saw her as a distraction that she could really focus her energy on. It was someplace to put her mind. When she meets Eleanor she’s extremely anxious and very insecure and she bottles so much up. By the end of the movie, she finds her voice. Reading that journey, it was very attractive to me to dig my teeth into this character.

She bottles a lot up, but not as much as her father does. Chiwetel, how did you approach the role of Roger?

Chiwetel Ejiofor: I felt there was something very truthful about Roger when I read the script. A lot of his issues that you see in the film kind of predate the death of his wife. I thought it might have been centered around watching a bond between a mother and daughter grow and feeling a little outside of that relationship. And then when this tragedy happens within the family, and he must step into the role of providing emotional support for his daughter, and that terrifies him. He doesn’t feel equipped to do that and hasn’t really built the strength of that bond. In a way, this experience of what happens in the film allows not only for him to explore his grief, but also to try to connect to something that’s deeper that was never fully there, the emotion between him and his daughter. All of that felt very honest to me. Those family dynamics felt very plausible without the grief, but if you then add the grief on top of that along with the ways people process that grief, it all felt truthful.  

There was almost a throwaway line about how much he used to fight with her mother when she was alive, and I feel like that’s pretty illuminating for the character.

CE: Absolutely. I think there are clues in there as to the nature of that family relationship. Although it’s not irrevocably broken, Roger does take a lot of responsibility for the failings in his family dynamics. He is empathetic, and he does care. The Fabric of New York segment is important to him because it does look into people’s lives and their connections and their family and responsibilities in a way that is positive. But I think it’s only through this circumstance that he’s able to find himself in an area where he is comfortable, which is sort of saving the day for his daughter when everything collapses. He wants to help his daughter by separating her from Eleanor and the lies. And it’s only in that space that he’s able to reconnect to something a bit more emotionally.

June, how did you reconcile Eleanor’s lies with making her sympathetic? 

JS: I just wanted to make her human. If the audience understands her, they’ll forgive her. We really have that sense of forgiveness at the end. We played around with different endings, but that sense of forgiveness was always there. There were so many positive things about this character that the audience was able to root for her.  

I read that you hired real Holocaust survivors to portray survivors in the film. What was it like working with them?

SJ: From the very beginning, it felt like it would be so weird to cast actors in those roles. Too thin or something. So then I thought, do you just cast people because they look a certain way? I don’t know how to do that. The challenge was to identify survivors that wanted to participate or felt they could participate in these long days. Luckily, because we were shooting in New York, there’s a community of survivors, a higher population than in most other places. Every time one more person joined the group, we would be so excited. Jessica Hecht, who’s extraordinary in the film, is very involved in the Jewish community here in New York, and she was able to identify a couple of people through her temple. The temple we shot at on the Upper West Side was able to identify a few people. Ellen Lewis, who cast the movie, was also able to find a few people that wanted to participate.

It was amazing. This group of people didn’t know one another, and a lot of them were activists, as you can imagine. They were sharing their stories with one another and making connections. On those days, it was so magnificent to be on set. Now you think, okay, I’m going to be in the presence of one person who had this experience, but now we have a whole group of people that have had difference experiences, and it was moving. We felt so honored to be able to have them. And everybody was so patient. Making a film means long days. They were all such patient listeners and actively participated in the scene work. I think it showed on screen. The portrayals of them, I think it cut deeper. There’s another layer of depth to those scenes because of their participation.

Q&A with Spike Lee

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Highest to Lowest.

Your relationship with Akira Kurosawa dates back to the beginning of your career. Can you share how you first encountered Kurosawa’s work and what drew you to reimagine it?

Spike Lee: People always assume that this film is a remake of Kurosawa’s High and Low, but it actually began with Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom. I once met Kurosawa in Tokyo; he signed a piece of calligraphy for me with a paintbrush, and that moment stayed with me as a reminder of the master’s generosity. Years later the script found its way to Denzel Washington. He called me from an unfamiliar number, told me he had something I needed to read, and sent it overnight. Before I’d even hung up the phone I knew I was going to direct—it had been nineteen years since we collaborated on Inside Man, and the idea of reuniting excited both of us. When we sat down for the first read‑through it was as if no time had passed; that shorthand allowed us to take a classic story and bend it to our own rhythm. I kept thinking about how John Coltrane could take a song like ‘My Favorite Things’ and make it his own without losing respect for the original. That was our goal. We weren’t interested in a shot‑for‑shot remake. We approached this adaptation like jazz musicians: you know the melody, but you riff, you improvise, and you make it yours. And because Denzel and I have that Batman‑and‑Robin partnership, we trust each other to try things you wouldn’t attempt with anyone else.

imagine doing that while holding a bag of ransom money

One of the most electric moments in the film is the confrontation between David King and a young hustler, which feels almost like a rap battle. How did that come together on set?

S.L.: That scene was scripted as an argument, but on the day Denzel surprised all of us by quoting verses from Nas’s Nastradamus. A$AP Rocky rolled with it, trading bars and energy like two MCs. I didn’t know Denzel was going to bring those lines; neither did Rocky. You watch two artists…a legend and a rising star…pushing each other in real time. It becomes a high‑noon showdown: the camera holds steady as they fire off words, and you feel the tension mount without a single cut. Rocky isn’t a seasoned screen actor, but he stood tall opposite Denzel, and that courage shows on screen. The scene lifts the whole movie because it’s alive. This is our fifth film together, and Denzel understands that sometimes you have to break the script open to find the truth. Rocky matched him beat for beat, and that improvisation gives the confrontation real juice. Afterward people asked if it was choreographed; it wasn’t. It was two performers trusting the moment and respecting each other’s craft.

The sequences set during the Puerto Rican Day Parade and the ransom drop are some of the most gripping in the film. Can you talk about blending music, sports and New York culture to build that tension?

S.L.: Eddie Palmieri and his band performed live in those scenes—there was no playback, no safety net. They were supposed to do one or two takes, but Eddie was having so much fun that we let him play eight or nine times, and he kept adding flourishes. He passed away just before our premiere, so those performances are especially precious now. I wanted the audience to understand that the kidnapper isn’t some caricature: he’s smart, demanding Swiss francs instead of dollars because he knows they’ll be easier to handle in a ransom drop. To raise the stakes, I set the drop on a weekend when the Yankees were playing the Red Sox and the Puerto Rican Day Parade was sweeping up the Bronx. If you’ve ever taken the 4 train to Yankee Stadium on a game day you know that feeling of being pressed shoulder‑to‑shoulder as fans pour in—now imagine doing that while holding a bag of ransom money. We scouted the roller‑skating park near Yankee Stadium and blocked out how to weave the parade, the band, and the ransom hand‑off together. I went up to the Blue Note to convince Eddie to join us and promised to keep his cameo a surprise so the moment would feel organic. All of these details—the live salsa, the parade floats, the rivalry—situate the thriller within the rhythms of New York. People tell me it’s a ‘great New York movie,’ and I take that as a compliment because the city itself is a character with its own music and pulse.

The film ends on an amazing musical sequence featuring a new performer singing a haunting song. When did you conceive of that final scene and how did you find the singer?

S.L.: New York used to be a magnet for artists from all over the world, but it’s become so expensive that a lot of creatives can only be discovered online. When I read the script and saw that the closing music hadn’t been specified, I knew it was my job to find a voice that could carry us home. I spent about an hour a day scrolling through Instagram looking for musicians and poets; that’s how I found Aiyana-Lee Anderson, a singer whose tone reminded me of Lauryn Hill, and a guitarist [Jensen McRae] who some people call ‘the Black Joni Mitchell.’ I flew to Los Angeles, met them both and asked them to write songs for the film. We recorded their performances live on set with the crew working quietly around them. In the editing room we noticed that when Alana sings, the camera lingers on Denzel’s face and you can see how deeply the song moves him. Denzel has an incredible ear—he grew up listening to Quincy Jones and knows how music can shape a scene—so he suggested we add subtle orchestration under her voice. That choice lets the audience hear the song the way David King hears it: first as an unadorned voice, then with arrangements that swell as his emotions swell. Technology brought us these artists, but the live recording grounds it in reality. To me that scene encapsulates what filmmaking can do: bring together story, music and performance so you leave the theatre feeling like you’ve been somewhere.

Q&A with Kate Beecroft, Tabatha Zimiga, and Porshia Zimiga

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of East of Wall.

Kate, as a first-time director, you went out looking for a story. How did you discover these women and this story?
Kate Beecroft: I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I always wanted to be a writer and director, but when you’re a young girl, everyone tells you should be an actress. I went to drama school in London but just to study Shakespeare. I love storytelling, but I don’t like acting. I’m also a production designer for commercials, because I really love world building. When I first met Tabatha and Porshia, I had never seen their kind of world before—how modern they feel in the west. That really guided me.

I was on a road trip with my Cinematographer [Austin Shelton] and I didn’t think that we would be making a feature. We were just getting little things because I had no resume! I thought, maybe I can get something to put on Instagram so I can get hired to direct a music video or something. We took a wrong turn, found a woman and she said, if you want an amazing story, head east of Wall and you’ll find Tabatha. That’s what I did. And I met these two incredible women along with the rest of the teenagers on the ranch. And I just fell in love with them. They were the faces and spirits that I’ve been dying to see in film. I ended up spending about three years living with them before even writing the script. It was important to learn as much as I could from them to collaborate on this project.

she was the key to all the authenticity

Tabatha, what was it like having this woman live with you for three years?
Tabatha Zimiga: I mean, first meeting Kate, I thought she was full of Hollywood, you know?

KB: Well, I was wearing a trucker hat and dirty jeans, and despite living on a truck for two weeks, I did still look Hollywood!

TZ: She did, she did. You can just tell when someone is not from your area.

KB: Not corn fed!

TZ: Exactly. No, it was really awesome to work with Kate. Within a few hours of meeting her, I felt safe with her, I trusted her, and that’s something that I don’t give out easily. Having Kate come out to the ranch, she dug right into everything. She sat on the floor and blow-dried a baby calf in the middle of a storm trying to keep it alive. She’s helped in every aspect. She can ride now.

KB: That’s a compliment coming from you! I’m not good.

TZ: It was awesome to have her immersed into our lifestyle, and she’s taught us a lot about this world.

Porshia Zimiga: When I first saw Kate, I thought she was not going to last here. She didn’t know anything about farm animals, but she fit right in once she learned everything. We can keep her.

Can you talk about how the film was shot? It looks incredible.
KB: My cinematographer Austin, this was his first feature as well. We found the story together. A lot of people who have watched the film have asked, what are your references? And our references are really how we shot them the first five days of meeting them… so much was happening and that’s when we kind of developed this more verité style. I think with South Dakota, a lot of people will lean into Terrence Malick. And it’s funny because I actively tried not to do that. So then, like Indiewire is like “it’s so Terrence Malick” and I’m like, no, we tried not to do that! Because their life feels more Andrea Arnold, more in your face, more chaotic. But if we are ever going to use that Terrence Malick lens or Days of Heaven lens, I need it to just be for very specific moments. I didn’t want to rely on the gorgeous sunsets; I wanted to have both. It was also very important to me to have Tabatha’s lens in it as well. And the girls’ lens. All the TikTok footage, that’s all footage they’ve had for years. They use TikTok in their daily life, and Snapchat, and I knew I wanted their fingerprints on it. I didn’t want it to feel like mine. There were also a lot of conversations I had with Tabby, like, how would you shoot this horse? What do you see when you look at this? I wanted it to be as authentic as possible, and she was the key to all the authenticity.

What was it like consulting on the visuals, Tabatha?
TZ: Oh, I’m always behind the camera at home. I take videos. I probably should have went into photography. My phone is bursting with thousands of pictures of horses and the kids and videos and clips that I’ve done and all that. If I see something that I think needs to be photographed, I will stop in the middle of whatever I’m doing, get down on the ground if I need that angle, and I don’t care about anything else.  It was cool to work with Kate on that, with the respect she gave me and the love and always asking my opinion. Together we made something epic, I think.

I’m glad that you used that word together because this is a collaborative medium and I have to say that I really appreciate many of the production elements of the film, especially the way it’s cut and the way it sounds.
KB: We had an amazing editor, Jen [Vecchiarello], who has cut incredible films. She did this film for like no money because she wanted to help tell the story. And I’m not a precious director. I’m not someone who is going to lie and pretend that I know all the answers. That’s why I love collaborating so much. We were ruthless in the edit—the script was pretty different, but the heart was still the same. If something wasn’t working, I would be the first one to say, get rid of it.

It was fun to collaborate on that, but also Tabby’s life is so overstimulating, constantly. I wanted to capture that. All the music in the film, the entire soundtrack is songs from Tabby’s Spotify playlist that I begged the producers to get me the money for. Two Shaboozey tracks in an indie film! That was intentional to get it to feel like ‘slice of life,’ to feel like verité, to feel like documentary, because I didn’t want to put a Hollywood bow at the end of everyone’s stories. And I think a lot of people are like, well, what happened with Jesse? What happened with this? These kids are still living their lives. Who am I to go in and tie up their stories and put a fake bow on how their life is meant to end? To me, that’s the real doc element to this story. That could be really damaging to someone’s life, especially to a kid, to be like, “this is where I hope you ended up!” No, I’m just going to leave it because it’s still happening. People always ask Tabby what she’s doing now. And she’s like, that shit! Cowboy shit, that stuff you just saw!

The sound design was also super important. I waited a very long time—we even missed certain festivals because I was waiting so long for this guy Sergio Diaz to do our sound design. He’s done Roma, Pans Labyrinth, Into the Wild, all of my favorite films. I just love his sound design. Sound design is one of my favorite things to collaborate on, and their whole life is just full of sound, so it needed to be perfect.

Can you talk about this experience, both shooting and promoting the film, and what it means for girls and young women? The portrayal of them in the film feels special.
TZ: That is exactly what we were going for and I can’t believe the response that we’ve gotten from almost everybody. It’s incredible. I don’t know if I’ve woken up yet, but I’m blown away by people. It was also super scary. I’m still kind of in a little box and I try not to think about the fact that the whole world is looking inside me right now. The response from people has been so beautiful.  

PZ: I love to see people are enjoying watching it as much as we enjoyed filming it. It was remarkable making this.

What was most enjoyable about filming?  
PZ: Working with Kate, obviously, and my horse! I loved riding my horse. All of those scenes of him running across the field, we’d do that daily, and it’s one our favorite things to do. And just filming it was fun, I like making movies.  

KB: I think that every teenage horse girl wants an epic shot of them on their favorite horse. So now she has a bank full of that footage!