The National Society of Film Critics voted Guillermo del Toro's
fantasy drama Pan's Labyrinth the best picture of 2006.


At its annual voting meeting in New York at the weekend (6), the 58-strong critics body re-elected David Sterritt as chairman.


Pan's Labyrinth narrowly beat out Cristi Puiu's The Death Of Mr
Lazurescu and Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima, taking 34 votes compared to 31 and 29 for the other two.


Best director honours went to Paul Greengrass for United 93, while Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth won the best non-fiction award.


Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren maintained their awards season status as Oscar frontrunners by coming top of the lead acting categories for The Last King Of Scotland and The Queen.


Mark Wahlberg and Meryl Streep won the supporting actors categories for The Departed and The Devil Wears Prada, while Emmanuel Lubezki took the cinematography award for his work on Children Of Men.


Peter Morgan was the runaway winner in the screenplay section for The Queen. Best experimental film went to David Lynch's Inland Empire, which the group described as 'a magnificent and maddening experiment with digital video possibilities.'


The Film Heritage Award went to Rialto Pictures' work on restoring and releasing Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 film Melville's Army Of Shadows.


The Film Heritage Award went to the Museum of the Moving Image for presenting the first complete US retrospective of French filmmaker Jacques Rivette.


The results of the meeting were dedicated to the memory of Robert Altman.

Topics