Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard’s musical about a transgender gangster escaping from the mob in Mexico, has broken the record for the most Oscar nominations earned by a film not in the English language.
The film took 13 at the announcement on Thursday – three more than both Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2001 and Roma in 2018.
The recognition of its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, marks the first time an out trans actor has been nominated for an Oscar; Elliot Page was nominated for Juno in 2008, 12 years before he transitioned. Audiard’s film was also shortlisted for supporting actress (for Zoe Saldaña), director, picture, adapted screenplay, international feature, editing, cinematography, makeup and hairstyling, original score, best sound, and twice for 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 US after the second world war, took 10 nominations, as did Wicked, the box office smash adaptation of the Broadway show.
James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown came away with eight nominations, as did Edward Berger’s papal thriller Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes. But Berger, whose All Quiet on the Western Front was an awards sensation two years ago, missed out on a directing nomination and, despite an ample selection of supporting actors, including John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci and Lucian Msamati, the only 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) up 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 body horror The Substance – and Fargeat was also the only female screenwriter with a solo credit across the 10 scripts in contention.
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 category frontrunner, having built up considerable momentum since her Golden Globe victory earlier this month. Both she and Gascón will face Cynthia Erivo for Wicked, Mikey Madison for Sean Baker’s sex worker romance Anora and Fernanda Torres, who stars in Walter Salles’s real-life story of a Brazilian abduction, I’m Still Here.
There was disappointment for Brits including 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 horror film Heretic) nor Daniel Craig (for erotic obsession drama Queer) repeated their Golden Globe nominations to land a place in the final five leading actors.
Alongside Brody, Fiennes and Chalamet are Colman Domingo for prison drama Sing Sing and Sebastian Stan for unflattering Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice; the inclusion of both Stan and supporting actor Jeremy Strong (as Roy Cohn) could be interpreted as an early attack by Hollywood on the returning 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 similarly looks like an increasingly sure bet in the supporting actress race. Denzel Washington, however, failed to secure his 11th nomination for his showstopping role in Gladiator II.
Ridley Scott’s belated sequel to his 2000 Oscar-sweeping hit had been tipped to repeat the trick at this year’s ceremony; in fact, it was only shortlisted for best costume design.
Meanwhile, neither of Luca Guadagnino’s films from last year – Challengers and Queer – were given any love by the Academy, and neither Pamela Anderson not Jamie Lee Curtis were nominated for The Last Showgirl.
There was disappointment, too, for Irish-language music drama Kneecap, which despite being up for six Baftas, did not make the cut in any category at the Oscars. The best international feature shortlist instead leads with Emilia Pérez, alongside I’m Still Here, Danish baby-killing drama The Girl With the Needle, Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian drama The Seed of a Sacred Fig and Latvian cat cartoon Flow.
That film also faces competition in the animated film shortlist against Memoir of a Snail, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, The Wild Robot (which received three nods overall) and Inside Out 2, which had been an outside bet for a best picture nomination.
The documentary shortlist similarly skewed towards the chewy, with no space for Will Ferrell road trip Will & Harper, or a look back at the life of Christopher Reeve.
Instead, No Other Land, a weighty investigation about the destruction of the Masafer Yatta district of the West Bank, vies for the award against Porcelain War, about artists in Ukraine, Black Box Diaries, about a seminal sexual harassment case in Japan, an ambitious jazz-fuelled study of the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat and an investigation into the Canadian Indian residential school system, Sugarcane.
This year’s nominations were delayed twice to allow more time for the 10,000 voters – about 60% of whom live in Los Angeles – to see films and cast their ballots after the California wildfires. Voting closed last Friday; it remains unclear what impact the subsequent row over the use of AI in The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez will have.
Both films used the technology for voice-cloning: the former tweaking the Hungarian accents of Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, the latter enhancing the singing voice of Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón.
Speaking after the revelation, The Brutalist director Brady Corbet defended his stars, saying: “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own.”
A letter from the Academy’s 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 acknowledge those who fought so bravely against the wildfires”.
“We will honour Los Angeles as the city of dreams, showcasing its beauty and resilience, as well as its role as a beacon for film-makers and creative visionaries for over a century,” they continued. “We will reflect on the recent events while highlighting the strength, creativity, and optimism that defines Los Angeles and our industry.”
The Academy also announced that it would “move away” from live performances during the broadcast in favour of honouring the songwriters, whose involvement has long been felt to have been minimised in the ceremony.
This year’s Oscars will take place on 2 March, and will be hosted by Conan O’Brien. The Bafta awards take place a fortnight earlier, on 16 February.
