‘She Said’ and ‘Women Talking’ have been honored as two of the best movies of the past year by the Women Film Critics Circle (WFCC), which has announced its complete list of 2022 award winners today. The critics group is celebrating the best movies by and about women, including outstanding achievements by women, who rarely get to be honored historically in the film world. The award-winning films also emphasize WFCC’s mission statement that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully.

WFCC is an association of 75 women film critics and scholars from around America and world, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. The group was formed in 2004 as the first women critics organization in the United States, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism needs to be recognized fully. WFCC also prides itself on being the most culturally and racially diverse critics group in America, and best reflects the diversity of movie audiences.

The complete list of the 2022 winners and nominees honored by the WFCC is listed below:

Best Movie About Women

Winner: ‘She Said’

Runner-Up: ‘Women Talking’

‘The Woman King’

‘Till’

Best Movie by a Woman

Winner: ‘Women Talking’ – Sarah Polley

Tie: Runner-Up: ‘The Woman King’ – Gina Prince-Bythewood

Tie: Runner-Up: ‘Till’ – Chinonye Chukwu

‘Don’t Worry Darling’ – Olivia Wilde

Best Woman Storyteller (Screenwriting Award)

Winner: Sarah Polley – ‘Women Talking’

Rnner-Up: Rebecca Lenkiewicz – ‘She Said’

Dana Stevens (and Maria Bello, story) – ‘The Woman King’

Emma Donoghue  – ‘The Wonder’

Best Actress

Winner: Michelle Yeoh – ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

Runner-Up: Danielle Deadwyler – ‘Till’

Cate Blanchett – ‘Tar’

Vicky Krieps – ‘Corsage’

Best Actor

Winner: Brendan Fraser – ‘The Whale’

Runner-Up: Colin Farrell – ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’

Bill Nighy – ‘Living’

Ke Huy Quan – ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’

Best Foreign Film by or About Women

Winner: ‘Happening’

Runner-Up: ‘Corsage’

‘Murina’

‘Rickshaw Girl’

Best Documentary by or About Women

Winner: ‘The Janes’  

Runner-Up: ‘Lucy and Desi’

‘Aftershock’

‘Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down’

Best Equality of the Sexes

Winner: ‘Good Luck To You, Leo Grande’

Runner-Up: ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’

‘Fire of Love’

‘The Woman King’

Best Animated Female

Winner: Meilin – ‘Turning Red’

Runner-Up: Izzy Hawthorne – ‘Lightyear’

 Belle Bottom – ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’

Best Screen Couple

Winner: Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan – ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

Runner-Up: Kevin Kline & Sigourney Weaver – ‘The Good House’

Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack – ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’

Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward – ‘Empire of Light’

 Best TV Series

Tie: Winner: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

Tie Winner: ‘Yellowjackets’

Tie Runner-Up: ‘Dead to Me’

Tie Runner-Up: ‘Julia’

*Adrienne Shelly Award – For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women

Winner: ‘Women Talking’

Runner-Up: ‘She Said’

‘Don’t Worry Darling’

‘Holy Spider’

*Josephine Baker Award – For best expressing the woman of color experience in America

Winner: ‘Till’

Runner-Up: ‘Nanny’

‘Alice’

‘Master’

*Karen Morley Award – For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageoussearch for identity

Winner: ‘Women Talking’

Runner-Up: ‘The Woman King’

‘Alice’

‘The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson’

Acting and Activism Award

Geena Davis

Lifetime Achievement Award

Rita Moreno 

*Adrienne Shelly Award: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Herkiller tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower rack in her bathroom, to make it look like suicide. He later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film ‘Waitress,’ which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.

*Josephine Baker Award: The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

*Karen Morley Award: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.