The Academy found its nominees on the international film-festival circuit, not at the movie theater.
In the years since it began a committed effort to diversify and expand its membership, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has weathered strikes, the pandemic shutdown of theaters, and constant hand-wringing about declining TV ratings and potential cultural irrelevance. But one trend has remained consistent for the Academy Awards, the voting body’s annual big event: The Academy has been getting more and more international. This year’s nominations, announced today (six days later than planned, after a delay in recognition of the horrific Los Angeles fires), confirmed the extent to which Oscar voters’ tastes have shifted. The French-produced, Spanish-language musical Emilia Pérez received the most nominations of the day, accompanied by several other movies that premiered—and were big hits—at European film festivals.
The Academy nominated 10 films for Best Picture, leaving room for some of the biggest blockbusters of last year. The musical Wicked (10 nominations) and the sci-fi sequel Dune: Part Two (five nominations) were two of 2024’s highest-grossing films, racking up hundreds of millions more in box-office grosses than most of the other Oscar contenders.
But if you want to gauge the true awards favorites, looking at the Best Director category, where only five hopefuls get picked, is usually more useful. Each of this year’s directors is a first-time nominee in the category, and four worked on features that mainstream moviegoers might consider unorthodox: Alongside the filmmaker Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, there’s the indie darling Sean Baker’s Anora, a raunchy dramedy about a sex worker; the actor turned filmmaker Brady Corbet’s 215-minute historical drama, The Brutalist; and the relative newcomer Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, one of the few horror films in the Academy Awards’ history to resonate with voters. The writer-director James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown—a musical biopic that’s seen as conventionally attractive Oscar fare—stands out as the anomaly of the group. That Mangold’s film was also the only one to skip the international-festival circuit further suggests a turning tide for the Academy’s preferences.
