The award came in an unusual year for the festival, which hosted a hybrid event with the British Film Institute’s online player showing films digitally, while the BFI Southbank in London and cinemas around the country also held some physically distanced screenings.
The festival director, Tricia Tuttle, said Another Round had a huge audience reaction on social media and was “a perceptive examination of midlife masculinity in crisis”, which was sympathetic but “refreshingly lacking in self-pity”.
Nomadland, Chloé Zhao’s film that won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival in September and stars Frances McDormand as a widow forced on to the road to find work, was also not eligible.
Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, which stars Mads Mikkelsen as a disillusioned teacher who along with a small group of colleagues decides to drink every day, won best film at the UK’s first major film awards since the start of the pandemic.