The Oscars are no longer what they used to be. In the past, Hollywood mainly celebrated itself. Anything else was considered scandalous. For example, when Laurence Olivier's Hamlet won Best Picture in 1949. ‘Hollywood freaked out because a British film won. The horror!’ recalls Michael Schulman in the New Yorker. But in recent years, some things have changed. Hardly anyone expected the French film 'The Artist' to win five Oscars in 2012, including Best Picture, Best Director for Michel Hazanavicius and Best Actor for Jean Dujardin. In 2020, Bong Joon Ho's ‘Parasite’ was the first Asian candidate to win Best Picture, as well as the Oscars for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film.
A similar accumulation of awards for a non-American film is not expected this year, but it is noteworthy that foreign films are more prominently represented in the key categories. My personal favourite is the Brazilian production ‘O agente secreto’ (The Secret Agent) by Kleber Mendonça Filho, who also wrote the screenplay. Although he has not been nominated for Best Director, the film has won around 50 awards since its premiere in Cannes, including a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Wagner Moura, who is now nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor, also won a Golden Globe. Since José Padilho's ‘Tropa de elite’ (2006), Moura has become an international star. In the Netflix series ‘Narcos,’ he played the paunchy Pablo Escobar just as convincingly as the skeptical journalist Joel in Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’ (2024).
The Norwegian entry 'Sentimental Value' has received a record nine nominations, having almost won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and eventually taking home the Grand Prix of the Jury. Joachim Trier is nominated not only for Best Director but also for Best Screenplay, Renate Reinsve for Best Actress and, surprisingly, alongside Elle Fanning, the Norwegian actress Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, who is completely unknown abroad and impresses in the film as Reinsve's sister. Less surprising, however, is the nomination of Stellan Skarsgård as Best Supporting Actor, who has already appeared in numerous American productions. The list is completed by nominations for Best Editing and Best Foreign Film. Compared to ‘O agente secreto’, ‘Sentimental Value’ is at times a little too “sentimental”, lacking the humour of Joachim Trier's previous film ‘The Worst Person in the World’. However, this emotional intensity is likely to increase its chances.
German critics also accused Chloé Zhao's Shakespeare drama 'Hamnet' of sentimentality. Unfairly, in my opinion. It was based on Maggie O'Farrell's novel of the same name (2020), which paints a more down-to-earth picture of Shakespeare than we have been used to seeing. The author refers to an essay by Stephen Greenblatt (‘Hamnet and Hamlet’, New York Review of Books, 2004) in which the renowned Shakespeare scholar points to the similarity between the names Hamnet and Hamlet in the late 16th century and links the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet to the creation of the famous drama. Jessie Buckley, who plays the central role of the daughter of a ‘forest witch’ and Shakespeare's wife, is rightly nominated for Best Actress, as would have been equally deserved by Paul Mescal for his portrayal of Shakespeare himself and Łukasz Żal for his excellent cinematography.
Of course, American productions continue to dominate the list of nominations. Leading the way is Ryan Coogler's ‘Sinners’ with 16 nominations, a historic record. Coogler, who emerged as the most successful African-American director after his Marvel adaptation ‘Black Panther’ (2018), creates a wild mixture of realistic Southern drama set in 1930s Mississippi, vampire and horror thriller. Two black gangsters who have made their fortune in Chicago (Michael B. Jordan in a double role) return to the South to open a juke joint, a blues bar for a black audience. Outside, racist whites lurk, who are revealed to be vampires and turn the night into a bloody spectacle. I must admit, I find it difficult to understand the enthusiasm of American critics for this exuberant genre mix, which is celebrated as black self-empowerment.
Paul Thomas Anderson's ‘One Battle After Another’ is rightly acclaimed with 13 nominations, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Leonardo Di Caprio as Best Actor. In the first half, he plays a revolutionary who builds bombs and frees migrants from a detention camp. In the second half, we see him on the run from his pursuers, permanently stoned and wearing a bathrobe. They are led by Sean Penn (also nominated) as the grim border patrol officer Captain Lockjaw. His military crew cut and demeanour bear a striking resemblance to the notorious border patrol commander Greg Bovino, whose deployment in Minneapolis sparked a wave of outrage. Considering the years of preparation that went into the film, Anderson's illustration of the brutal tactics of the US Border Patrol has an almost prophetic quality. Nominated for Best Supporting Actress is singer Teyana Taylor, who, as a passionate revolutionary at DiCaprio's side under the extravagant name Perfidia Beverly Hills, sweeps through the film like a force of nature
A possible surprise candidate could be 'Marty Supreme', which has received nine nominations and catapulted its director Josh Safdie into the front row of Oscar contenders. For Timothée Chalamet, this is already his third nomination for Best Actor. He plays a table tennis champion named Marty Mauser, who fights his way to the top in the 1950s using every trick in the book. Apparently, he once again prepared meticulously for the role and was coached by table tennis professionals. During the Oscar campaign, he organised a self-deprecating Zoom call in which he presents himself as an eccentric Hollywood star with abstruse marketing ideas. ‘Marty Supreme’ was released in the US shortly before the end of the year in order to qualify for the Oscars in time. American critics are enthusiastic, and the film is scheduled to be released in German cinemas at the end of February.
In the Best Foreign Film category, the German candidate ‘In die Sonne schauen’ (Sound of Falling)) made it onto the shortlist but was ultimately not nominated. Mascha Schilinski's female generational epic, which was highly acclaimed in Cannes and won the Jury Prize, had already come away empty-handed at the European Film Awards. Óliver Laxe's ‘Sirāt’ from Spain, also awarded with the Jury Prize at Cannes, was more fortunate and now finds itself on the list of nominees in Los Angeles. The same goes for the winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, ‘It Was Just an Accident’ (Un simple accident) by Jafar Panahi, an Iranian production that was submitted as the French entry and is likely to have a good chance given the current events in Iran. Also nominated is the docudrama ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ about a girl in Gaza who, locked in a car, makes calls for help to the Red Crescent until she is finally killed by the Israeli military. The Tunisian film had already caused a stir in Venice, where director Kaouther Ben Hania won the Grand Jury Prize. In view of the nominal “ceasefire” in Gaza, this controversial topic has currently ceased to be the focus of media attention.
On the whole, this year's list of nominations is quite encouraging. It seems that the Oscars are proving themselves to be better than their reputation. The majority of nominations went to independent productions, with no commercial blockbusters among them. The Oscars' openness to international cinema is also having a positive effect. Hollywood is countering Donald Trump's ‘America First’ slogan by giving greater weight to foreign productions. The fact that the Academy, which organises the awards ceremony, now has more voting members from abroad than it did years ago certainly plays a role.
“Why do we care about the Oscars so much?” asks Erin Neil in an interview with The New Yorker, to which her colleague Michael Schulman aptly replies: “Look, there are plenty of reasons to be cynical about the Oscars, but the best thing about them is that they spark a culture-wide conversation about films, including ones that aren’t huge blockbusters and need word-of-mouth oxygen to survive.”