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Outtakes

Fearless Oscar Predictions 2025

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It is time! And whether you think Wicked was wonderful, Emilia Pérez was overrated or Nosferatu needed more love, one thing is certain. It will be tough for this year’s Oscar broadcast to reach the wild heights of last year. (Please bring back Nicolas Cage, Kate McKinnon and Ryan Gosling!)

In the meantime, here are our predictions for this year’s big winners:

Actress in a Supporting Role

For a while, it looked like Netflix’s big bet this year was going to make a big splash at Oscar. But as the race draws to a close, we think Emilia Pérez will content itself with just one win.

Should win: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Will win: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

  • Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
  • Ariana Grande, Wicked
  • Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
  • Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
  • Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Actor in a Supporting Role

What a great field this year. Each actor cut an unforgettable character.

Should win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Will win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

  • Yura Borisov, Anora
  • Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
  • Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
  • Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
  • Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

There were two real standouts in this field in 2024. We believe one of those two will go home empty handed, but the other will take home the Oscar.

Should win: Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley, Clarence Maclin, John “Divine G” Whitfield, Sing Sing

Will win: RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes, Nickel Boys

  • A Complete Unknown: James Mangold and Jay Cocks
  • Conclave: Peter Straughan
  • Emilia Pérez: Jacques Audiard; in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Lea Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi
  • Nickel Boys: RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes
  • Sing Sing: Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley; story by Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, John “Divine G” Whitfield

Writing (Original Screenplay)

What’s the old cliché —the film that should win best picture usually wins best screenplay instead? This year, we predict both awards go the same direction, but we’d love to see one messy piece of female rage get it instead.

Should win: Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Will win: Sean Baker, Anora

  • Anora: Sean Baker
  • The Brutalist: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
  • A Real Pain: Jesse Eisenberg
  • September 5: Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum; co-written by Alex David
  • The Substance: Coralie Fargeat

Documentary Feature Film

As is often the case, the Academy draws attention to five brilliant nonfiction films, each shining a light on a piece of reality that we would otherwise never see. Vital, brilliant, necessary art, each one of these. Any win is justified.

Should win: No Other Land

Will win: No Other Land

  • Black Box Diaries
  • No Other Land
  • Porcelain War
  • Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
  • Sugarcane

International Feature Film

Here’s another great and wildly varied category.

Should win: I’m Still Here

Will win: I’m Still Here

  • I’m Still Here: Brazil
  • The Girl with the Needle: Denmark
  • Emilia Pérez: France
  • The Seed of the Sacred Fig: Germany
  • Flow: Latvia

Animated Feature Film

This category is such a joy this year, with five of the year’s best features.

Should win: The Wild Robot

Will win: The Wild Robot

  • Flow
  • Inside Out 2
  • Memoir of a Snail
  • Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
  • The Wild Robot

Actor in a Leading Role

Tough call here, but we’re thinking Chalamet’s SAG win gives him the edge over Brody.

Should win: Colman Domingo, Sing Sing

Will win: Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

  • Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
  • Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
  • Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
  • Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
  • Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Actress in a Leading Role

Should win: Demi Moore, The Substance

Will win: Demi Moore, The Substance

  • Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
  • Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Pérez
  • Mikey Madison, Anora
  • Demi Moore, The Substance
  • Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here

Best Director

Would we cry if Fargeat won this? Tears of joy, maybe. But the likelihood is low and, to be honest, the tightrope Baker walked to give his film an almost slapstick comedic tone (given that it’s a film about a group of mobsters who kidnap a sex worker) is a real testament to his mastery of the craft of direction.

Should win: Sean Baker, Anora

Will win: Sean Baker, Anora

  • Anora: Sean Baker
  • The Brutalist: Brady Corbet
  • A Complete Unknown: James Mangold
  • Emilia Pérez: Jacques Audiard
  • The Substance: Coralie Fargeat

Best Picture

The Substance has a real shot, with Conclave as the upset possibility.

Should win: Anora

Will win: Anora

  • Anora
  • The Brutalist
  • A Complete Unknown
  • Conclave
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Emilia Pérez
  • I’m Still Here
  • Nickel Boys
  • The Substance

The Academy Awards are Sunday, March 2nd, live on ABC and Hulu with Conan O’Brien hosting.

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Perspective

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Nickel Boys

by Hope Madden

You’ve never seen a film quite like RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys. The filmmaker, with an inspired Jomo Fray behind the camera, delivers a visual poem of tragedy, resilience and American history.

Ross, along with Joslyn Barnes, adapts Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, but brings such human and humane treatment that the nonfiction roots cannot be ignored. Whitehead wrote about the Dozier School for Boys—the same American institution that fueled Tananarive Due’s horror novel, Reformatory. But Ross does not mine the institution’s 110-year history of dehumanization, abuse and murder for horror. Instead, he shows us how powerful that evil was by allowing us to see it through the eyes of two best friends.

You might find point-of-view filmmaking in bursts in other films—Michael Myers watching his sister through the eye holes of his Halloween costume, for example. But Ross never deviates, never leaves the most intimate and personal perspective of the events unfolding. His camera represents either the view from Elwood’s (Ethan Herisse) own eyes, or his best friend Turner’s (Brandon Wilson).

Elwood’s a good kid, smart, kind, and devoted to his grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) and we see what he sees in lyrical bursts: a party in his childhood, his grandmother praying for him, successes and trials at school, an opportunity to begin college while he’s still in high school, the approach of white police officers, incarceration, the first small piece of kindness offered by a fellow teenage inmate.

And then, for the first time, we truly see Elwood because the camera becomes that one friend, Turner. This is not Turner’s first run-in with the law. He’s begrudgingly protective of the innocent Elwood. 

The perspective shift, the elements of Whitehead’s novel that made it seem too difficult to adapt, becomes Nickel Boys’ greatest strength. You cannot watch this film and distance yourself from the injustices or from the small joys. This remarkable subjective intimacy is what made Ross’s documentaries so magical and moving—you come away with a personal relationship with the film and its subject because you have born witness as the subject.

Wilson, Herisse and Ellis-Taylor guarantee that the style is more than gimmick, bringing their characters so tenderly to life that their story will devastate you. The story of a school that dehumanized and murdered Black young men for over 100 years should do that.