Oscar Volley: Best Original Screenplay is the Battle of the Auteurs

In this Oscar Volley, Eric Blume and Cláudio Alves discuss the Best Original Screenplay race…

HARD TRUTHS, Mike Leigh

ERIC BLUME: Hi Cláudio, I put us together on this one because I love arguing with you.  Hope that's okay.  Plus, I am curious to get your takes on some of these films and scripts.

Best Original Screenplay has a lot of strong contenders this year.  What I find particularly interesting is that eight of these feature scripts written by their directors - Seed of the Sacred Fig, A Real Pain, The Substance, September 5, Anora, The Brutalist, All We Imagine as Light, and Hard Truths.  That has to be some kind of record? 

CLÁUDIO ALVES: With the growing connection between the big European film festivals and the awards season, auteur cinema is on the rise as an Oscar gold magnet. And many of those selections favor director-forward productions, often where the folks in the director's chair also penned the script. Indeed, from the octet you mention, only A Real Pain and Hard Truths premiered outside Cannes or Venice. And with Mike Leigh's latest, it wasn't for a lack of trying on his part…

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Category Confusion '24: LEAD or SUPPORTING – Part Two

by Cláudio Alves

As promised, the debate about category placement shall continue to encompass new releases as we all head into the awards season proper. This year seems especially ripe with category fraud, so there's a lot for us to discuss – there's a world of possibility where no supporting performance gets nominated at the 97th Academy Awards. In any case, let's think back to the first round of voting. Last time, when deciding if a given performance was lead or supporting, you deliberated on various titles that have become more widely available since. So, feel free to go back and cast your vote if you have just now seen such pictures as Emilia Pérez, Blitz, and A Real Pain. I also have some campaign updates from my purview as a Golden Globe voter. It turns out that at least one of these category fraud cases changed to lead…

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Which International Feature Films will get into Best Picture?

by Juan Carlos Ojano

96 years of Oscars, 14 international feaure films nominated for Best Picture.

While some awards bodies have already commenced the season, Best Picture is still very much an open race. One of the statistics many predictors consider is the presence of international feature films in the category. Since 2018’s Roma - and save 2020, where Another Round even got into Director - every Best Picture lineup has included one. Last year, history was made, when two international features making it in, with Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest.

Perhaps this is one of the effects of the inclusivity efforts the Academy has initiated post-#OscarsSoWhite, where they included more world artists into their membership. This year, which international feature films will stand a chance of getting into this year’s Best Picture roster? Consider...

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"The Room Next Door" and "Emilia Perez" lead the EFA Nominations

by Nathaniel R

Nominations are in the for 37th annual European Film Awards which will take place on December 7th in approximately one month's time. You may recall that last year was dominated by Anatomy of a Fall which took home six awards (Film, Director, Actress, Screenplay, and special awards like Editing and the European University Film Award). It also proved popular with Oscar voters. Here are your nominees for the 2024 prizes. The awards ceremony moves each year. In December it moves to Switzerland for the first time. Oscar hopefuls The Room Next Door (hitting US theaters in December) and Emilia Perez (which hits Netflix next week) lead the nominations with four citations each. International Feature Film Oscar contenders like Denmark’s The Girl with the Needle, Germany’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Italy’s Vermiglio, Latvia’s Flow, Norway’s Armand and Senegal’s Dahomey were also popular with voters, scoring multiple nominations. 

Although people don't tend to think of the EFAs as an Oscar precursor, their collective taste does align fairly well with Oscar voters. It's been 9 years, for example since the winning film wasn't also Oscar nominated for either Best Picture and/or Best International Feature Film...

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TIFF '24: A Mohammad Rasoulof Double Feature

by Cláudio Alves

THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

Much of the period leading up to this year's Cannes Film Festival was consumed with news of Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. Always outspoken against an oppressive regime, his career has been dedicated to political art commenting on present injustices through the prism of fiction. For this, he has been arrested multiple times, and his latest feature, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, proved too much for the Iranian authorities. Police hounded many people involved with the production, Cannes organizers were pressured to drop the official competition title, and Rasoulof himself was put behind bars, convicted to eight years in prison and an additional filmmaking ban. Thankfully, before celebrations started at the Croisette, the cineaste managed an escape to a safe house in Germany, the same country that now takes Sacred Fig to the Oscars as its official submission.

At TIFF, two works with screenplays signed by the Iranian political dissident were screened. There was the eponymous Cannes prize-winner and Seven Days, directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi…

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