United 93, a drama focusing on one of the planes hijacked by al-Qaeda militants in the Sept. 11 attacks, won the best picture prize Monday in the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

The New York critics awards, the third major film honours given out during Oscar season, can sometimes be an indicator of upcoming Academy Award nominees.

Written and directed by Paul Greengrass and featuring a cast of unknowns to give it a documentary-style feel, United 93 recreates the events of the fateful flight, culminating in the passengers' wresting control of the jet, which ultimately crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren continue to solidify their positions as Oscar front-runners by each winning the top acting prize from the New York critics — Whitaker for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland and Mirren for her take on Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.

Mirren and Whitaker received the same awards in recent days from the U.S. National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, both which selected Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima as the top film of 2006.

Scorsese scores

Martin Scorsese, who was born in the New York borough of Queens, was the New York critics' choice for best director for his Boston mob saga The Departed.

Supporting-actor honours went to Jackie Earle Haley for his turn as a sex offender in Little Children, and Jennifer Hudson for her performance in Dreamgirls, an adaptation of the Broadway hit.

Best animated film went to the penguin movie Happy Feet, which has earned $137.7 million at U.S. box offices.

Last year, the New York Film Critics Circle — a group of New York-based newspaper and magazine critics — selected as top film the gay cowboy love story Brokeback Mountain, which lost the Oscar to surprise winner Crash.

In 2004 it named Sideways as the year's best picture, while the Academy Award went to Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby.

Other awards announced Monday by the New York Film Critics Circle were:

  • Best Screenplay: The Queen by Peter Morgan
  • Best Cinematographer: Guillermo Navarro for Pan's Labyrinth
  • Best Non-Fiction Film: Deliver Us From Evil, by director Amy Berg
  • Best First Film: Half Nelson, by director Ryan Fleck
With files from the Associated Press