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In Venice, Telluride and Toronto, the red carpets have been rolled up and the dust has settled on the film festivals which traditionally function as Oscar launchpads. Back in Hollywood, publicists are recalibrating campaigns and pundits are placing their bets on the big films and performances of the upcoming awards season.
A few key contenders are still yet to be seen, but at this stage of the race, one thing seems clear: come next March, records will be broken. A victory for any of the three current frontrunners would mean unprecedented scenes on the podium.
Venice’s big hit was ticking clock nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite, whose director, Kathryn Bigelow, became the first woman to win the Oscar for best director back in 2009 with The Hurt Locker. Should she triumph for a second time, Bigelow would become the first woman to win the director Oscar twice in the awards’ 96-year history.
The same would also be true of Chloé Zhao, whose drama Nomadland was nominated for six Oscars, in most of the key categories, and won three including best director and picture, in 2021. Zhao’s latest, Hamnet - the toast of both Telluride and Toronto - was adapted by Maggie O’Farrell from her own novel and stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal as Agnes and William Shakespeare, torn apart by the death of their son. The film mixes awards-friendly literary fittings with a keenly feminist narrative and passionate turns from hot young stars who also seem shoo-ins for nominations.
Zhao didn’t just become the second woman to win the best directing Oscar, but also the first woman of colour to do so. To date, no Black people, men included, have ever won that Oscar, with only six ever nominated (although Steve McQueen and Barry Jenkins have directed best picture winners).
That would change should Ryan Coogler’s Sinners sustain the momentum of its cinema launch in April. A steamy horror starring Coogler’s frequent collaborator Michael B Jordan, Sinners has taken $366m (£270m) worldwide – a remarkable result for a non-franchise, original concept movie. Coogler is perceived as a talent too often passed over for recognition, whether for his Sundance debut, Fruitvale Station, or his Marvel smash Black Panther, the most lucrative film ever made by a Black director, taking $1.3bn (£960,000). And few bodies are more eager to celebrate movies that strike a chord with young, diverse and mainstream audiences than the Academy.
Sinners skipped a festival launch, but as the example of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023, seven Oscars) shows, that may no longer be an issue, provided the film can stay in the conversation for almost a year. The recent precedent for the latter feat was madcap genre-hopper Everything Everywhere All at Once, which debuted in early 2022 at South by Southwest festival in Texas before sweeping the 2023 awards.
From 2007 to 2024, 13 of 18 best picture winners (72%) premiered at a festival, with Cannes indexing especially well, giving us the likes of Parasite, The Zone of Interest, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall, The Substance, Emilia Pérez and last year’s big Oscar victor, Anora. But this year things were quieter on the Croisette and only the Palme d’Or winner, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, looks set to really trouble Oscar voters outside the best international film category.
This void leaves potential for other films to come into play, including those which might have otherwise been notable mostly for their splashy star turns. Wrestling biopic The Smashing Machine means Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson is a definite in the best actor category, but there may also be nods for director Benny Safdie and co-star Emily Blunt. Sydney Sweeney also fights her way into the best actress race with a punchy turn in boxing drama Christy; that film may also pick up some supporting star silverware. Jay Kelly is a star vehicle for George Clooney, but Noah Baumbach’s film is unlikely to only be up for best actor.
Yet the feeling from both Venice and Toronto was that festivals as a whole have been muted so far this year. This means spots are also being held for those films still to premiere. Next week will see first reviews of Paul Thomas Anderson’s US freedom fighter comedy-drama One Battle After Another starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn – all three men are staples of the Oscars, though the film itself is not thought to be the same awards slam dunk as some of Anderson’s previous titles. Buzz is also building for Marty Supreme, starring last year’s Oscars bridesmaid Timothée Chalamet as a table tennis prodigy who has an affair with a gangster’s wife played by Gwyneth Paltrow.
In early October, the New York film festival offers early looks at Is This Thing On?, Bradley Cooper’s fourth film as director, starring Will Arnett as an aspiring standup, as well as Daniel Day-Lewis’s comeback as a former British soldier in hiding in the woods, in Anemone, directed by his son, Ronan Day-Lewis. And Emmy favourite Jeremy Allen White will be giving us his best Bruce Springsteen impression in a biopic co-starring Jeremy Strong and Stephen Graham.
Meanwhile, only the foolish would write off James Cameron, king of the Oscars, the man responsible for three of the four highest-grossing films of all time, whose latest Avatar spectacular is being positioned as a Christmas treat. The first of those CGI eco-fables lost out in 2009 on all the big Oscars to The Hurt Locker – a film directed by his ex-wife.
At the time, this unusual public face-off was the subject of extensive column inches – and was still being referenced in 2013, when Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty was nominated for four Golden Globe awards and host Amy Poehler memorably noted that, “when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who was married to James Cameron for three years.”
Will Cameron have the last laugh, or will Bigelow once again triumph? Either way, a rematch between these big beasts of cinema should raise the stakes yet further on this already charged Oscar season.
