With the nominations for the 2024 Oscars, the awards with which the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences celebrates the best of its films released in 2023, the awards season reaches its zenith. As usually happens every year, the list of candidates once again confirms the favoritism, but also provides some surprises (although the latter are becoming fewer and fewer). Among the failures of the year are the notable absences of Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, protagonist and director of Barbie, in their respective categories, and that of Leonardo Di Caprio in the Best Leading Actor for his work in The Assassins of the Moon, of the master Martin Scorsese. Also notable is the triple candidacy of Bradley Cooper as producer, star and screenwriter of Maestro.
Despite this, no one will be surprised to learn that among the most nominated films of the year are the omnipresent Oppenheimer and Barbie, by Christopher Nolan and Gerwig, protagonists of the Barbenheimer phenomenon that marked last year, with 13 and 8 nominations respectively. Along with them, Poor Creatures, by the Greek Yorgos Lanthimos, also stand out, with 11, The Assassins of the Moon with 10, and Maestro with 7. With 5 nominations each, Those Who Remain, by Alexander Payne, appear along with American Fiction, by Cord Jefferson. Without being surprises, the French Anatomy of a Fall, by Justine Triet, winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival, and The Zone of Interest, by the British Jonathan Glazer, also appear on the pentanonominated list. the already archetypal place for the year’s great foreign films. All of them were also nominated in the category of Best Film, a category that reaches 10 candidates with the presence of the romantic drama Past Lives, by Celine Song.
Barbie does not have any nominees for its protagonist or its director.
In the Best Director category the elections were predictable, with Nolan, Scorsese and Lanthimos, accompanied by the British Glazer and the French Triet. For her part, the shortlist for Best Leading Actress did not deviate from the foreseeable either, although she presented the relative surprise of leaving out Robbie. Among the nominees are Emma Stone for her role in Poor People, Lilly Gladstone for The Moon Killers, and the British Carey Mulligan for Maestro. They are joined by Annette Bening for Nyad and the German Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall. Among the candidates for Best Actor, those chosen were no less popular: Cillian Murphy, for Oppenheimer, Paul Giamatti, for Those Who Remain, and Bradley Cooper. Jeffrey Wright, for American Fiction, and Colman Domingo, for Rustin, occupy the role of cover of the year.
As in every season, the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor categories are once again among the most competitive. Among the first nominated were Jodie Foster (Nyad), Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer), Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Those Who Stay), Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple) and América Ferrara (Barbie), notably the absence of Juliane Moore, for her notable work in Secrets of a Scandal, by Todd Haynes, one of the great forgotten productions of these Oscars 2024. While among the “boys” the obvious names of Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer), Ryan Gosling (Barbie), Robert De Niro (Killers on the Moon) and Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things), along with Sterling K. Brown occupying the supporting role among the supporting cast for their work on American Fiction.
As is usually the case, in the screenplay categories there are (almost) no surprises, with nine of the ten candidates for Best Film distributed between both. Within Best Adapted Screenplay are Oppenheimer, Barbie, Hotspot, American Fiction and Poor Creatures; while on the Best Original Screenplay side were Los que se quenta, Maestro, Anatomy of a Fall and Past Lives, alongside which Secrets of a Scandal managed to sneak in, in its only nomination.
The snow society has some Argentine flavor in the cast and crew.
The Best International Film category brings some Argentine flavor thanks to the candidacy of the Spanish production The Snow Society, by filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona, whose cast and technical crew include a large presence of local talents. But the unavoidable absence of Autumn Leaves, the exquisite latest work by the Finnish Aki Kaurismaki, is also surprising. The international shortlist is completed with The zone of interest (United Kingdom), Teachers’ room (Germany, Iker Çatak), I, Captain (Italy, Matteo Garrone). The note here is provided by Perfect Days, a film directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, but which will compete representing Japan. The eastern country will also be represented in the Best Animated Film category, thanks to the nomination of The Boy and the Heron, by master animator Hayao Miyazaki. Spanish cinema also once again shows its power, with the choice of the exquisite Robot Dreams, by Pablo Berger. The category is completed with the usual fight of giants: Elemental (Disney), Nimona (Netflix) and Spider.Man: Through the Spider-Verse (Sony/Columbia).
Within the field of documentary, the Ukrainian anti-war politician 20 Days in Mariupol, by Mstyslav Chernov, received an expected nomination. Also notable is the appearance of Infinite Memory, the latest work by Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi. Along with these productions appear the Bobi Wine titles: The People’s President (Uganda/United Kingdom), To kill a Tiger (Canada) and the European co-production Les Filles d’Olfa. Within the technical categories, without a doubt one of the most relevant is Best Photography. In it the nominations of Oppenheimer, Poor Creatures, The Moon Killers and Maestro were obvious. The great appearance of the category came from El conde, a film where the Chilean Pablo Larraín imagines a vampire version of the dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose cinematography was in charge of the American Edward Lachman. Lachman had already received two previous nominations for his work in Carol (2026) and Far from Heaven (2003), both directed by Todd Haynes, the great forgotten 2024.
