Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard’s musical about a transgender gangster fleeing the mob in Mexico, has broken the record for the most Oscar nominations won by a non-English-language film.
The film took 13 upon announcement Thursday – three more than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2001 and Roma in 2018.
The recognition of its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, marks the first time a transgender actor has been nominated for an Oscar; Elliot Page was nominated for Juno in 2008, 12 years before his transition. Audiard’s film was also selected for Supporting Actress (for Zoe Saldaña), Director, Motion Picture, Adapted Screenplay, International Feature Film, Editing, Cinematography, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music original, best sound and twice for the original song.
Meanwhile, The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour epic about a Hungarian architect, played by Adrien Brody, who moves to the United States after World War II, scored 10 nominations, as did Wicked , the box office adaptation of the Broadway show.
James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, earned eight nominations, as did Edward Berger’s papal thriller, Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes. But Berger, whose All Quiet on the Western Front was a sensation two years ago, missed out on a directing nomination and, despite a large cast of supporting actors, including John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci and Lucian Msamati, the only An acting nod other than Fiennes was for supporting actress Isabella Rossellini.
A Complete Unknown, however, fared better than expected, with Edward Norton (as Pete Seeger) and Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez) vying for awards alongside star Timothée Chalamet.
Only one of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture was directed by a woman – Coralie Fargeat’s controversial horror film The Substance – and Fargeat was also the only female screenwriter to have a solo credit on all 10 competing screenplays.
There were a number of surprises in the leading actress category, with industry veterans Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie snubbed for their turns in Babygirl and Maria. Instead, Demi Moore now becomes the favorite in the category, having gained considerable momentum since her Golden Globes win earlier this month. She and Gascón will compete against Cynthia Erivo for Wicked, Mikey Madison for Anora, Sean Baker’s sex worker romance, and Fernanda Torres, who stars in Walter Salles’ real-life Brazilian kidnapping story, I’m Still Here .
There was disappointment for the Brits, notably Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who had been tipped to repeat her 1997 nomination for Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies with one for her reunion with Leigh, Hard Truths. And neither Hugh Grant (for the horror film Heretic) nor Daniel Craig (for the erotic obsession drama Queer) repeated their Golden Globe nominations to land a spot among the final five leading actors.
Joining Brody, Fiennes and Chalamet are Colman Domingo for the prison drama Sing Sing and Sebastian Stan for the unflattering Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice; the inclusion of Stan and supporting actor Jeremy Strong (as Roy Cohn) could be interpreted as an early Hollywood attack on the outgoing president.
Kieran Culkin leads the pack of supporting actor nominees for his turn in Jesse Eisenberg’s Holocaust tour comedy A Real Pain, while Emilia Pérez’s Zoe Saldaña also emerges as an increasingly safe bet in the race for supporting actresses. Denzel Washington, however, failed to secure his 11th nomination for his stunning role in Gladiator II.
Ridley Scott’s belated follow-up to his 2000 Oscar success had been tipped to repeat the trick at this year’s ceremony; in fact, he was only shortlisted for Best Costume Design.
Meanwhile, neither of Luca Guadagnino’s films from last year — Challengers and Queer — received any love from the Academy, and neither Pamela Anderson nor Jamie Lee Curtis were nominated for The Last Showgirl.
There was also disappointment for Irish-language musical drama Kneecap, which, despite being shortlisted for six Baftas, was not shortlisted in any category at the Oscars. The list of best international features is topped by Emilia Pérez, alongside I’m Still Here, Danish baby death drama Girl with a Needle, Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian drama The Seed of a sacred fig and the Latvian cat cartoon Flow.
This film also competes in the animated film list against Memoir of a Snail, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, The Wild Robot (which received three nominations in total) and Inside Out 2, which had been a gamble outside for a Best Picture nomination. .
The documentary shortlist also skewed toward the fluffy, with no room for Will Ferrell’s road trip Will & Harper, or a look back at the life of Christopher Reeve.
Instead, No Other Land, a wide-ranging investigation into the destruction of the Masafer Yatta neighborhood in the West Bank, competes for the prize against Porcelain War, about artists in Ukraine, Black Box Diaries, about a sexual harassment case in Japan, an ambitious study fueled by jazz on the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961, the soundtrack of a coup d’état and an investigation into the Indian boarding school system of Canada, Sugarcane.
This year’s nominations were delayed twice to give more time for the 10,000 voters — about 60% of whom live in Los Angeles — to see movies and vote after the California wildfires. Voting closed last Friday; it is still unclear what impact the subsequent dispute over the use of AI in The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez will have.
Both films used voice cloning technology: the first tweaking the Hungarian accents of Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, the second improving the singing voice of Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón.
Speaking after the reveal, The Brutalist director Brady Corbet defended his stars, saying: “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are entirely their own.”
A letter from Academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Janet Yang sent to all members on Wednesday confirmed that the ceremony “will celebrate the work that unites us as a global film community and honor those who fought so courageously against forest fires. .
“We will honor Los Angeles as the City of Dreams, showcasing its beauty and resilience, and its role as a beacon for filmmakers and creative visionaries for more than a century,” they continued. “We will reflect on recent events while highlighting the strength, creativity and optimism that define Los Angeles and our industry.”
The Academy also announced that it would “move away” from live performances during the broadcast in favor of a tribute to the songwriters, whose involvement has long been seen as having been downplayed in the ceremony.
This year’s Oscars will take place on March 2 and will be hosted by Conan O’Brien. The Bafta Awards take place a fortnight earlier, on February 16.
