Lessons From The 2025 Best Picture Nominees

While the world’s spotlight has been on Hollywood for a reason besides the motion pictures as of late, with the city of stars rebuilding itself following the devastating wildfires that engulfed it last month, it hasn’t stopped them celebrating another eclectic year at the movies as we draw closer to the 97th Academy Awards, set to honour the crème de la crème of the 2024 release calendar.

This year’s ceremony has been marked by a notable turbulence, ironically suited to a particularly bizarre year at the cineplex: with franchise IP put to the test, the waging war between streaming and theatrical continuing and an industry catching up from various strikes that paused the cameras the year before, it has been marked by a volatility that has coalesced into an award season featuring exiled stars, purported smear campaigns and the possibility of seeing Conclave unfold in real time.

Such chaos is the result of an industry in desperate need of commemorating their efforts with a trophy or two, with no category more illustrious or desirable than the fabled Best Picture. This year, ten hopefuls are in contention for the industry’s top accolade, and while not all ten carry the same chance of winning, each film cracking the shortlist illuminates details of an industry at a crossroads, showing where it is, where it’s heading, and where it should be placing its stock. So let’s take a look at each of the nominees, and investigate their contribution to our understanding of cinema today.

ANORA – Homegrown Stories

One thing the Academy loves is a homegrown success story, and with Sean Baker, they have exactly that. A filmmaker who has been chipping away in the independent film space for two decades now, quietly enriching the scene with an impressive handful of acclaimed features that platform marginalised voices, Baker’s work has finally caught the Academy’s attention, the Palme d’Or winning Anora has earned itself six Oscar nominations and is a real contender for the top award.

Leading the way for a sub-genre coined “American Neorealism”, inspired by Italian Neorealism and British Realism, and defined by an authenticity, Baker’s unwaveringly consistent work exists outside the glamourised way Hollywood typically wish to present themselves; but as social issues become a greater concern to our very existence, such representation feels urgently important. Operating under the illusion that bringing these stories of sex workers, trans folk and working-class Americans to the mainstream will go a long way in validating their challenges, Baker’s work connects more profoundly than ever.

And while Anora has performed strongly overseas, including its debut and win at Cannes Film Festival and its Best Film victory at the BAFTAs, there is an unshakeable Americanisation that the Academy will likely view as crucial to defining their organisation.

THE BRUTALIST – The Importance of Self-Importance

If there’s one film in contention this year for Best Picture that harkens back to the Hollywood of yesteryear, it’s Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist. An epic period drama with a 215 minute runtime including a mid-film intermission and resurrecting VistaVision, a higher resolution picture format popularised in the 1950s before dying out in 1961, it’s hard to shake the nostalgic “they don’t make them like they used to” narrative that The Brutalist has used to drive its FYC campaign.

As much as the Academy has sought to reflect the evolving landscape of both Hollywood and society in their award picks by diversifying its voting body, they are – like many of America’s most distinguished establishments – blinded by their own self-importance. Regardless of quality, The Brutalist offers the opportunity to celebrate the ‘traditional’ nature of filmmaking that many voters consider worthy of preservation. Of course, there’s a heady political resonance to The Brutalist that will impress, but it is the air of prestige achieved through its ambitious attempt to revive a type of filmmaking rarely seen today that has catapulted it to nominations across the board, positioning it as one of arguably three frontrunners heading into the actual ceremony. 

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN – ‘Good’ Is Not The Enemy of Best Picture

There is a not-unfair misconception that Best Picture rewards the ‘best’; that to win the accolade is singular praise for the film deemed the number one, most loved. But given the voting process that the Academy utilise in establishing the recipient of the top prize – the preferential ballot system – the race has become, and has been since being reintroduced in 2009, a “universally liked” contest. Since the likelihood of a film earning a majority from ballots that have it ranked at number one is incredibly low, it then becomes a weighted ranking system, where the pole position can change any number of times before it reaches the threshold to be named the Best Picture winner.

You’d be hard pressed to find anybody calling James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, their favourite film of 2024. It earned a barrage of three to four star reviews, impressive but not exemplary critic reviews and a decent 3.5 average on Letterboxd – solid, but nevertheless the lowest scoring of the nominees (besides Emilia Perez, but more on that later…). And yet, A Complete Unknown performed very well across the board on nomination morning, picking up expected nods, but some surprise ones too. That type of blanket support really stands the film in good stead on a preferential ballot – sure, no one is screaming from the rooftops in support of the film, but a lot of people liked it, which may be enough – CODA’s victory three years ago supports that.

While I’m not predicting A Complete Unknown triumph in Best Picture, there is a genuine – not overwhelming but certainly noteworthy – chance that in a year as divided as this that it generates enough #2, #3 and #4 votes on the ballot to rise the ranks and secure a win. Even if it fails in that mission for the top prize, let it act as a reminder that it’s not always the films with the most vocal support that succeed, but often the most well-liked.

CONCLAVE – Reflecting The National Mood

Filmmaking is, and always will be, political. The year of, and the year following, a presidential election cycle are particularly attuned to the news cycle and landscape, reactive, almost predictive in a way that – despite often being made before a new president has been elected – feels incidentally aware of the world around them. The Academy typically likes their winner of Best Picture to reflect the national mood; take the 89th Academy Awards for example – would Moonlight have triumphed over La La Land if it weren’t for the sombre spectre cast over Hollywood, and indeed the nation, over an unexpected Clinton loss?

Eight years on, who in this year’s line-up could benefit most from Trump’s return to the White House? Conclave is the likely answer: Edward Berger’s pope drama tackles weighty themes like the pursuit, deceit and tradition versus progression, demonstrating the ugliness of the grapple for power that voters are only too familiar with from their own new cycle, and illustrating the fragmentation of a populace –  but it’s packaged in a mostly entertaining fashion here, with a markedly optimistic, perhaps idealised, conclusion making its final message one imbued with hope: something many are desperately searching for. If voters connect emotionally with that, it standS a real chance at taking home that top accolade on the night.

DUNE: PART TWO – Release Date Matters

Despite the almost universally-agreed understanding that Dune: Part 2 is stronger than its predecessor in almost every regard – critic reviews, audience scores and box office numbers all trump that of its predecessor – Denis Villeneuve’s sequel showed up with half the number of nominations Part One scored just three years prior, a disappointing but not entirely unexpected haul.

While that film benefited from the repercussions of a sparser release calendar given the impact of the COVID pandemic, Part One’s October release date positioned it closer to the award season window, meaning it lingered in the minds of voters casting their ballots just a few months later. Unfortunately for Part 2’s March release, by the time the Best Picture trophy is handed out, it will have been with audiences for over a year, disappointingly forgotten in the onslaught of films debuting in the year’s second half.

Although there’s evidence in recent years that nominees can break through despite an early-in-the-year release, this year’s nominees clearly skew to the second half of 2024, with Dune 2’s perceived underperformance almost entirely accredited to its unfortunate release date that may have reaped a box office bounty, but sadly at the cost of its award season success.

EMILIA PEREZ – Voter-Audience Disconnect

It’s been an awfully long time since we saw an audience-voter disconnect like we are seeing with Netflix’s Emilia Perez: the most nominated film at this year’s Academy Awards is conceivably the most hated nominee in the top category in some time.

While we should acknowledge that Emilia Perez’s abysmal Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score of just 16% has been impacted by the same right-wing suspects who bombard anything that exists beyond their noxious and narrow field of vision and acceptance, this time in the name of transphobia, there is also a much fairer argument to be made that Jacques Audiard’s bombastic feature is just not particularly good. Its 13 nominations, ranking it alongside classics like Gone With The Wind and Fellowship of the Ring, as well last year’s champion, Oppenheimer, are truly baffling, and even before the film shot to more widespread recognition, there was spreading confoundment as to how the film had registered so well on an industry level. From my personal standpoint, the reaction inside – and then outside – the press screening room at the London Film Festival was one of shock and confusion at what we were watching unfold.

With some of Hollywood’s top talent, including Denis Villeneuve, Emily Blunt, Greta Gerwig and Guillermo Del Toro, so publicly singing its praises, Emilia Perez’s divisiveness has purchased itself a one-way ticket into the Oscar history book meaning that, when the curtain finally falls on the 2024-25 award season, it’ll be immortalised – in fame or infamy, the decision is yours.

I’M STILL HERE – There’s Still Room For Surprise

Following award season in any capacity beyond a passing interest is not for the faint of heart. You can become so tied up in trends and statistics, “paths to victory” and “narratives” that, sometimes, you catch the fun draining out of the season before your very eyes. But then something like I’m Still Here cropping up in Best Picture (and scoring a best-case scenario outcome across the board) can arrive to give you – and the award season! – the jolt of so desperately needed excitement.

Brazil – always a dedicated nation, you need have only opened the Academy’s official nomination livestream to see the comment section flooded with emojis of its flag – was always expected to score a nomination on the International Feature front for the Walter Salles-directed political drama, but nods for the film in Picture and Actress were never a certainty, and came as a delight to pundits and spectators following along. No matter how closely you claim to follow an award season, surprises are guaranteed – particularly as the voting body diversifies in gender, age, race and nationality.

Proving that despite the mechanics and machination of the award season campaign trail, that sometimes really good films can rise up and enjoy their time in the sun, I’m Still Here is the type of film you fear could be forgotten in the competitive nature of the race, but mounted a grassroots campaign that let the strength of the film do the talking.

NICKEL BOYS – Not All Campaigns Are Created Equally

Not all award season campaigns are created equally, and, unfortunately for RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys, it received a particularly poor rollout that resulted in an underwhelming showing on nomination morning.

Despite following in the footsteps of last year’s American Fiction, which came from the same production company and were both distributed by Amazon MGM in a limited theatrical release before shifting to streaming, Nickel Boys failed to garner the same interest on nomination morning, despite widespread acclaim. With little campaigning experience and no clear evidence of a financial spend that came anywhere closer to the money-where-their-mouth-is studios like Searchlight (A Complete Unknown), A24 (The Brutalist), Neon (Anora) and Netflix (Emilia Perez), Amazon MGM could not give Nickel Boys the platform it needed to make its voice heard, particularly in an award season as ferociously fought at this one; it missed out on crucial, once-expected nominations for Cinematography, Supporting Actress and Editing. Likewise, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and the Brian Tyree Henry-starring The Fire Inside were similarly underserved this year by Amazon MGM’s lacklustre rollout, snubbed of Academy Award nominations completely.

While an appearance in the Best Picture line-up is nothing to scoff at, which it received alongside a Best Adapted Screenplay nod, there’s an unshakeable frustration that Nickel Boys could have been a key award season player, and would have almost certainly performed far better with a more robust distributor and campaigner…

THE SUBSTANCE – Forward-Thinking

Arguably the most forward-thinking entrant in the Best Picture line-up, The Substance represents not only solid progression for the often-dismissed horror genre on the Academy Awards stage, but recognition of the way the Academy – and the wider film industry – can do better: that of its treatment of its ageing actresses.

Coralie Fargeat’s classic-in-the-making tells the story of a “once-celebrated but now-faded Academy Award winning star” who is sacked from her job and replaced by a “”younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself. Demi Moore’s committed star turn propelled her into the Best Actress race, arguably the most hotly-contested of the night; her passionate speeches at various other ceremonies and interviews to promote the film have struck a sadly resonant note – she, more than many, has experienced the pitfalls of simply growing older in an unforgiving industry.

It is with a perhaps naive hope that by recognising The Substance, the Academy can reconcile their own mistreatment of a demographic who still have so much more to give, opening up both the type of roles Hollywood has on offer and the films they reward. It’ll be a matter of time before we know whether they heard the film’s message loud enough to inspire real change, but this nomination is a good sign of progress.

WICKED – A Musical Comeback

There is perhaps no genre more divisive between audiences than the movie musical, and the genre has had a particularly rocky relationship with Hollywood itself of late. While once a staple of the cineplex, they have gradually become few and far between, and despite bestowing ten musicals with a Best Picture trophy in its 96-year history, the last was 2002’s Chicago over two decades, representing an undeniable decline for the all-singing, all-dancing cinematic variety on both fronts.

However, with the exception of one misaligned superhero sequel, the genre roared back to life in 2024. Not only did it rack up three appearances on the top ten highest-grossing films at the worldwide box office, but there’s impressive representation amongst this year’s Best Picture line-up, thanks to the musically-inclined Emilia Perez and A Complete Unknown’s music biopic’s nature. With both superb box office receipts and an impressive ten nominations across the board, Wicked was the one leading from the front, revitalising a genre so desperately in need of a hit, and with For Good on the horizon, it seems audiences will be giving their best jazz hands for another year to come.

While its roots to Broadway no doubt bolstered its grosses, we can hope this will inspire both audiences and filmmakers to try their hand at new-to-them musicals, bringing around a new golden age of the musical.