After several postponements due to the forest fires in California, this year's Oscar nominations were announced on January 23, 2025. The following films are competing for the award for Best Picture of the past year: ANORA, THE BRUTALIST, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, CONCLAVE, DUNE: PART TWO, EMILIA PÉREZ, I'M STILL HERE, NICKEL BOYS, THE SUBSTANCE and WICKED. You can find all nominations on the Academy's official website:
https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2025Of course, we are happy for all films and artists that have been nominated. Nevertheless, we were surprised by some of them and also missed some artists. We don't want to comment on all the nominations here and just make a few small notes, especially of course about all the candidates for whom we are keeping our fingers crossed.
We were a little surprised that EMILIA PÉREZ was nominated 13 times, in almost every possible category. This is all the more unexpected because it feels like hardly anyone really likes the film, at least when we look at the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter.
THE BRUTALIST and WICKED have each been nominated 10 times and will surely win a few awards. A COMPLETE UNKNOWN enters the race with 8 nominations. James Mangold being on the list for Best Directing for a very straightforward musician biopic surprised us a little. In 2023, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTER FRONT by German director Edward Berger received 9 nominations and won 4 Oscars. His new film CONCLAVE is nominated for 8 Golden Boys. Good news!
Other German contributions in this year's Oscar ceremony are THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG in the Best International Film category and SEPTEMBER 5, which was shot in Munich and nominated for Best Original Screenplay by Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum and Alex David.
We were particularly pleased about THE SUBSTANCE being nominated in 5 categories. These included Best Picture, Best Directing and Best Original Screenplay for Coralie Fargeat, Best Actress for Demi Moore as well as Best Makeup & Hairstyling. It would also have deserved a nomination for Best Cinematography and Best Editing. It is really aggravating that Margaret Qualley did not receive a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Instead, Isabella Rossellini was nominated for CONCLAVE - for a few minutes in the film and very little lines. We found that quite startling.
We were also pleased about the 4 nominations for NOSFERATU in the categories Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design and Best Makeup & Hairstyling.
The 6 nominations for ANORA and 5 for DUNE: PART TWO are also impressive.
It is also pleasing that two animated films are among the nominees outside of the category of Best Animated Film. THE WILD ROBOT is nominated for Best Original Score and Best Sound and the film FLOW received a nomination as a Latvian entry in the category of Best International Film.
CHALLENGERS on the other hand didn't receive a single nomination.
We will stay awake throughout the night of March 2nd to 3rd to see which films will win the race and keep our fingers crossed for our favorites. What do you think: who will win an Oscar and who would you like to see with a golden boy?