Awards Roundup: 'The Ghost Writer' Scores At European Film Awards; 'The King's Speech' Takes British Independent Film Awards

It's that time of the year when there will be one film awards ceremony and/or critical poll after another, and we've got the results of three to kick off this week. The European Film Awards took place in Estonia over the weekend, and Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer scored six awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor, the latter for Ewan McGregor.

Meanwhile, at the British Independent Film Awards, The King's Speech took best picture, while Monsters director Gareth Edwards scored Best Director.  And the Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association honored The Social Network, Inception and The Fighter. All the lists are after the break.

We'll kick off with the DC critics, because it's the shortest list. It's also a very safe list, with very little consideration for films outside the expected list of studio and studio-indie awards choices. (Also nominated: 127 Hours, Black Swan, True Grit and a handful of others.)

The Social Network took Best Film, Best Director (David Fincher) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin). Inception took Best Original Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography and Score.Colin Firth (The King's Speech) took Best Actor, Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) got Best Actress, and the supporting categories went to Christian Bale and Melissa Leo from The Fighter. Toy Story 3 took Best Animated Feature, Biutiful took Best Foreign Language Film and Exit Through the Gift Shop took best Documentary. [winners via In Contention, which also presents the full nominee list]

On the other side of the coin is the European Film Awards, which handed The Ghost Writer six awards: Film, Director (Roman Polanski), Actor (Ewan McGregor), Screenwriter (Robert Harris & Roman Polanski), Production Designer (Albrecht Konrad), and Composer (Alexandre Desplat). Wonder if this will do anything to change the film's position in the Oscar and general stateside awards races? As Anne Thompson says, more people will probably watch the screener now, at least.

Also honored were Sylvie Testud for Best Actress in Lourdes and Luc Barnier & Marion Monnier for Editing on Carlos. The tank thriller Lebanon scored the Carlo Di Palma European Cinematographer Award for Giora Bejach and the Euopean Discovery Award. The Illusionist took best animated film. [Deadline]

Finally, the British Independent Film Awards gave six major awards to The King's Speech: Best Picture, Best Actor (Colin Firth), Best Supporting Actor (Geoffrey Rush), Best Supporting Actress (Helena Bonham Carter) Best Screenplay (David Seidler) and the honorary Richard Harris Award (Helena Bonham Carter).

But there was also a surprise. Gareth Edwards' film Monsters took Best Director, Best Achievement in Production and Best Technical Achievement. Those are great awards for Monsters, given that the semi-improvised film relied heavily on some nimble thinking and direction on the part of Mr. Edwards, along with a heavy dose of technical assistance. Carey Mulligan won Best Actress for Never Let Me Go, and A Prophet took the Best Foreign Film award.