Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap are the big winners at the 2024 Dublin Film Critics Circle awards. Released as far back as February in Ireland, Glazer’s unique and troubling study of the family that ran Auschwitz comfortably took the prize for best international film. The vote was, apparently, closer in best Irish film, but Rich Peppiatt’s madcap, fictionalised music biopic snuck past Tim Mielants’s Small Things Like These and Pat Collins’s That They May Face the Rising Sun to take the domestic prize.

Glazer confirmed his dominance by also taking the prize for best director and best screenplay. Loosely based on a Martin Amis novel – the author poignantly died on the day of the film’s premiere – The Zone of Interest has been a favourite with critics since landing at Cannes film festival a year-and-a-half ago. It won the second prize there and went on to take two Academy Awards in March. This is the first British film to win top prize from the circle since Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake, in 2016, and only the second since the prizes were inaugurated, in 2006.

Elsewhere, the critics showed a taste for more mainstream fare, awarding Conclave, Edward Berger’s papal thriller, two awards: Stéphane Fontaine’s rich interiors helped him to best cinematographer; Ralph Fiennes, who plays a divided cardinal, won best actor. Mikey Madison, electric in Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning Anora, feels like a deserved winner of best actress. She now also seems a soft favourite for the upcoming Oscars but will have stiff competition from Karla Sofía Gascón in Emilia Pérez (the circle’s number three pick) and Angelina Jolie in Maria (not released here until January). Nykiya Adams, who starred opposite Barry Keoghan in Andrea Arnold’s Bird, wins a breakthrough award.

The circle vote reminds us that a strong year for Irish features has been a little underreported. Kneecap, which was this week shortlisted for best international feature at the Academy Awards, has been a sensation since premiering at Sundance Film Festival in January.

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The titles taking second and third places have also been celebrated internationally. Small Things Like These, starring Cillian Murphy as a coal merchant caught up in revelations about Magdalene laundries in the 1980s, opened Berlin International Film Festival before going on to do strong domestic business.

[ Kneecap review: Ingenious blend of self-mythology and self-deprecation really does recall A Hard Day’s NightOpens in new window ]

Collins’s That They May Face the Rising Sun, a delicate adaptation of the John McGahern novel, in third place, also won many admirers on its release in the spring.

The final five is completed by Damien McCarthy’s ripping horror Oddity and Andrew Gallimore’s entertaining documentary One Night in Millstreet. That last film, a study of the 1995 fight in the titular Cork venue between Steve Collins and Chris Eubank, deserves to have a long afterlife.

The circle, whose president is the Irish Times writer Tara Brady, tabulates votes from professional critics working in the capital. Previous winners of the top prize have included Past Lives, An Cailín Ciúin, Boyhood and Brokeback Mountain.

Dublin Film Critics Circle poll 2024

Best film

1. The Zone of Interest
2. Anora
3. The Substance
4. Perfect Days
5. The Wild Robot
6. Emilia Pérez
7. Touch
8. Conclave
9. All We Imagine as Light
10. Robot Dreams

Best director

1. Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest
2. Coralie Fargeat for The Substance
3. Edward Berger for Conclave
4. Sean Baker for Anora
5. Wim Wenders for Perfect Day

Best documentary

1. Will and Harper
2. Dahomey
3. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
4. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
5. Grand Theft Hamlet

Best actor

1. Ralph Fiennes for Conclave
2. Cillian Murphy for Small Things Like These
3. Sebastian Stan for A Different Man
4. Colman Domingo for Sing Sing
5. Andrew Scott for All of Us Strangers

Best actress

1. Mikey Madison for Anora
2. Demi Moore for The Substance
3. Karla Sofía Gascón for Emilia Pérez
4. June Squibb for Thelma
5. Saoirse Ronan for The Outrun

Best screenplay

1. Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest
2. Peter Straughan for Conclave
3. Sean Baker for Anora
4. Coralie Fargeat for The Substance
5. Cord Jefferson for American Fiction

Best cinematography

1. Stéphane Fontaine for Conclave
2. Greig Fraser for Dune: Part Two
3. Lukasz Zal for The Zone of Interest
4. Eric K Yue for I Saw the TV Glow
5. Hélène Louvart for La Chimera

Best Irish film

1. Kneecap
2. Small Things Like These
3. That They May Face the Rising Sun
4. Oddity
5. One Night in Millstreet

Best breakthrough

• Nykiya Adams for Bird