Dublin Film Critics Circle awards 2025: Sinners wins near unprecedented number of categories

Big winners among Irish productions were Sinéad O’Shea’s Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story and Brendan Canty’s Christy

Michael B Jordan as Smoke in Sinners. Photograph: Warner Bros

Thu Dec 18 2025 - 11:00 • 4 MIN READ

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a busy historical epic that takes in vampirism, racial politics and the birth of the blues, has proved the big winner at the annual awards from Dublin Film Critics Circle (DFCC).

The film topped the poll in a near-unprecedented five categories: best film, best director, best actor, best screenplay and best cinematography. This is an impressive result for a genre piece that, though from a respected film-maker, did not, at the start of the year, look like the kind of project that wins awards.

“We were definitely hoping for it to do well,” Coogler, who is also the director of Creed and Black Panther, told The Irish Times in November. “There were a lot of calculated risks that we took on this movie. We bet on ourselves.”

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Already the recipient of seven nominations at the Golden Globes, Sinners is expected to score similarly well at the upcoming Oscar nominations, but it will face fierce competition from Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.

That huge political comedy has scored best-film wins from New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and Boston Society of Film Critics. In Dublin it had to settle for second place in best film, best screenplay, best director and, for Leonardo DiCaprio, best actor. Emma Stone took best actress for her turn in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, produced by the Dublin-based Element Pictures.

The big winners among Irish productions were Sinéad O’Shea’s Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story and Brendan Canty’s Christy. O’Shea’s film has, since a premiere at Toronto International Film Festival in late 2024, been picking up plaudits around the world.

It won best overall documentary from the DFCC and was runner-up to Canty’s lively social-realist picture in best Irish film. O’Shea’s study of a much-loved Irish writer was a sizeable hit on its Irish release in 2025.

Canty, a Cork film-maker previously best known for the music video for Hozier’s Take Me to Church, took the award for best Irish breakthrough. Eva Victor, director of the singular serious comedy Sorry, Baby, secured the gong for best international breakthrough.

DFCC paid tribute to their former member Philip Molloy, who died in June. The Wexford-born critic and journalist was a regular voter in the group’s polls. “He was truthful. You always felt he said exactly what he felt without any intention to harm or hurt,” the director Jim Sheridan said at the time of Molloy’s death.

[ The 50 best films of 2025 – a full list in reverse orderOpens in new window ]

The circle, whose president is Tara Brady of The Irish Times, gathers votes from the capital’s professional film critics once a year. Winners of best film in previous years have included An Cailín Ciúin, The Power of the Dog, Brokeback Mountain and The Zone of Interest.

The poll lands as the international awards season kicks into busy pre-Christmas gear. Earlier this week the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the shortlists – perhaps better called longlists – in 12 categories, ahead of the Oscar nominations being announced on January 22nd.

Two Irish films have been named among the 15 listed for best animated short. Giovanna Ferrari’s Éiru, from Kilkenny’s unstoppable Cartoon Saloon, follows a child as he descends into a mysteriously emptied well. John Kelly’s Retirement Plan features Domhnall Gleeson’s voice in the tale of a man looking forward to a quiet life after work. Five titles will go on to the Oscar competition.