And the winner should be… our film critics reveal their personal Oscars shortlists
Wendy Ide Best picture
My shortlist (my winner first)
The Zone of Interest
Anatomy of a Fall
Past Lives
Poor Things
Priscilla
Imagine an alternative reality in which the Academy rewarded creative risks and artistic daring. Instead of the usual prestige plodders, we could see the slippery courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall or the riotously batshit Poor Things in with a real chance of winning. But my pick would be Jonathan Glazer’s chilling masterpiece, The Zone of Interest, which has haunted me since I first watched it eight months ago.
Best director
Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest
Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things
Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer
Sofia Coppola – Priscilla
Christopher Nolan is a frontrunner for his blitzkrieg approach to Oppenheimer. And why not? There’s certainly a lot of very emphatic direction going on in the film. But my choice would be to reward a directorial hand that doesn’t repeatedly punch the audience: the delicacy of Sofia Coppola’s handling of Priscilla or the unshowy smarts of Justine Triet’s gripping Anatomy of a Fall.
Best actor
Andrew Scott – All of Us Strangers Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction Nicolas Cage – Dream Scenario Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer Colman Domingo – Rustin
Comic performances tend to be undervalued by awards voters, which is why I would be thrilled to see Nicolas Cage’s hilarious, vanity-free turn in Dream Scenario in contention, or a reward for Jeffrey Wright’s impeccably crisp and acidic line readings in American Fiction. But my pick in this category is Andrew Scott, who broke my heart in practically every frame of All of
Us Strangers. Best actress
Emma Stone – Poor Things
Teyana Taylor – A Thousand and One
Sandra Hüller – Anatomy of a Fall Natalie Portman – May December Greta Lee – Past Lives
Once again, the best actress category is a crowded field. Relative newcomers Greta Lee, a magnetic delight in Past Lives, and the superb Teyana Taylor in A Thousand and One, come up against more established names – a fabulously spiteful and synthetic Natalie Portman in May December and the magnificent Sandra Hüller. But Emma Stone takes it: her performance in Poor Things is utterly fearless.
Supporting actor
Charles Melton – May December Dominic Sessa – The Holdovers Glenn Howerton – BlackBerry
Mark Ruffalo – Poor Things
Paul Mescal – All of Us Strangers
The supporting acting categories are where we make discoveries – newcomer Dominic Sessa’s star-making turn in The Holdovers announces a considerable talent – and rediscoveries: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Glenn Howerton is almost unrecognisable in BlackBerry. My pick, though, is Riverdale actor Charles Melton, who delivers a heart-wrenching turn as a grown man scarred by childhood trauma in May December.
Supporting actress
Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers
Sandra Hüller – The Zone of Interest Julianne Moore – May December Claire Foy – All of Us Strangers
Eva Green – The Three Musketeers Both Sandra Hüller and Julianne Moore deliver their very best performances as the very worst of people, a Nazi wife and a child abuser respectively. Eva Green is irresistibly treacherous as the vampy Milady in both last year’sThree Musketeers films. But the frontrunner in this category is also my favourite: the sublime Da’Vine Joy Randolph, providing the heart and the soul of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers.
Best documentary
Four Daughters
Beyond Utopia
Apolonia, Apolonia
20 Days in Mariupol
The Eternal Memory
This year, best documentary seems particularly hard to call from the preannounced shortlist. Four Daughters, Kaouther Ben Hania’s formally daring hybrid documentary about the impact of radicalisation on a Tunisian mother and daughters, is a standout for me. But equally, I adored Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia, a propulsive real-life thriller about people fleeing from North Korea, and was fascinated by the intimate, intertwined relationship between film-maker Lea Glob and her painter subject in Apolonia, Apolonia.
Mark Kermode Best picture
Past Lives
Anatomy of a Fall
Enys Men
Poor Things
Infinity Pool
On Oscar night, it will probably be a title fight between Oppenheimer, Poor Things and Killers of the Flower Moon.My own favourite film, Past Lives, has a slim chance of making the 10strong nomination list, which would be gratifying. Meanwhile, Enys Men has zero possibility of nomination (boo!), while other Brit-pic faves such as Rye Lane and How to Have Sex aren’t eligible this year.
Director
Celine Song – Past Lives
Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall Mark Jenkin – Enys Men
Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer Greta Gerwig – Barbie
After his triumph at the Golden Globes, Chistopher Nolan seems set for a long overdue best director Oscar. French film-maker Justine Triet deserves recognition for her Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, but my own vote goes to Korean-Canadian feature first-timer Celine Song, whose Past Lives has the pitch-perfect confidence of a seasoned director. A star is born!
Best actor
Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer
Teo Yoo – Past Lives
Barry Keoghan – Saltburn
Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction Andrew Scott – All of Us Strangers Cillian Murphy is rightfully the bookies’ favourite for his extraordinarily nuanced title role in Oppenheimer – a performance captured in giant-screen closeup that turns his face into a vast landscape of complex micro-expressions. Plaudits, too, to German-South Korean star Teo Yoo for his devastatingly understated role in Past Lives, proving the maxim that great acting is all about reacting.
Best actress
Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Hüller – Anatomy of a Fall Emma Stone – Poor Things
Mary Woodvine – Enys Men
Greta Lee – Past Lives
Lily Gladstone provides the beating heart of Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moonand she has huge support among Academy voters and international audiences. Sandra Hüller’s multilingual turn in Anatomy of a Fallis another masterclass from a peerless performer, while Emma Stone gives it her all in Poor Things. And honourable mention to Mia Goth for the year’s most out there performance in Infinity Pool.
Best supporting actor
Charles Melton – May December Ryan Gosling – Barbie
Mark Ruffalo – Poor Things
John Magaro – Past Lives
Sterling K Brown – American Fiction After his popular Golden Globes win, Robert Downey Jr (Oppenheimer) is in pole position to take home the trophy on Oscar night. But my vote goes to Alaska-born Charles Melton, who quietly holds his own in the company of Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, both stellar screen actors at the top of their game, in Todd Haynes’s eerily low-key melodrama May December.
Best supporting actress
Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers
Sandra Hüller – The Zone of Interest Penélope Cruz – Ferrari
Viola Davis – Air
Danielle Brooks – The Color Purple Another vote for Sandra Hüller, for a very different performance in Jonathan Glazer’s icily disturbing The Zone of Interest. But it’s Golden Globe winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph who deserves Oscar success for the warmth and depth she brings to Alexander Payne’s bittersweet retro charmer The Holdovers. Also, hooray for Penélope Cruz, who really fires the engines of Ferrari.
Best original score
Jerskin Fendrix – Poor Things
Mica Levi – The Zone of Interest Daniel Pemberton –Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Robbie Robertson – Killers of the Flower Moon
Laura Karpman – American Fiction My most listened-to score of 2023 was Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen’s ambient accompaniment to Past Lives, reminiscent of Eiko Ishibashi’s Drive My Car soundtrack from 2021.Like Icelandic maestro Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score for A Haunting in Venice, Past Liveswas eligible but not in the shortlist announced last month. Luckily, British musician Jerskin Fendrixhas made the shortlist for Poor Things – his music unlocks the emotive power of Lanthimos’s strange gem.
Guy Lodge Best picture
The Zone of Interest
All of Us Strangers
Anselm
Beau Is Afraid
Showing Up
Choosing just five nominees was hard; picking a winner, however, was easy. Since Cannes, The Zone of Interest has stayed on my mind and under my skin: Jonathan Glazer’s immaculately constructed portrait of a Nazi family living on the other side of the Auschwitz wall presents the Holocaust as it hasn’t previously been filmed, vast atrocities all the more overwhelming for going unseen, hushed away behind dahlia beds.
Best director
Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest
Ari Aster – Beau Is Afraid
Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things Hlynur Pálmasson – Godland
Alice Rohrwacher – La Chimera
I shan’t complain when Christopher Nolan most likely wins his long-awaited Oscar: Oppenheimer represents a peak for his scientific approach to film craft and his cool fixation on destructive masculinity. But Glazer outdid him on formal exactitude and jolting historical perspective, while I also thrilled to more fanciful directorial visions last year, from Rohrwacher’s earthy magical realism to Lanthimos’s baroque Franken-fantasy to Aster’s nightmare absurdism.
Best actor
Franz Rogowski – Passages
Riz Ahmed – Fingernails
Josh O’Connor – La Chimera Thomas Schubert – Afire
Andrew Scott – All of Us Strangers This was a banner year for queer lives on film, normalised without being shorn of complexity and pathos. For me, best actor is a virtual coin-toss between two extraordinary versions of this brief. Playing a gay man isolating himself in the past, Scott’s is an aching study in solitude, whereas Rogowski is both incandescent and infuriating as a polysexual artist who either loves too much or not all.
Best actress
Sandra Hüller – Anatomy of a Fall Julianne Moore – May December Emma Stone – Poor Things
Tia Nomore – Earth Mama
Michelle Williams – Showing Up
The line between lead and supporting performances can be debatable. The presumed best actress frontrunner is Lily Gladstone, potent in, but frequently absent from, Killers of the Flower Moon; many assumed she’d go supporting. Julianne Moore is hardly supporting Natalie Portman in the icy duality study May December, though that’s where she’s being campaigned; I’m promoting her. But there’s no ambiguity about Sandra Hüller’s filmowning tour de force.
Best supporting actor
Jamie Bell – All of Us Strangers
Jacob Elordi – Saltburn
David Krumholtz – Oppenheimer Daniel Henshall – The Royal Hotel Nathan Lane – Beau Is Afraid
It can feel random which actors get singled out from ensembles. Robert Downey Jr won a Golden Globe for his fine, lizardy villain in Oppenheimer, but I would as happily give his spot to costars Matt Damon, Jason Clarke or the especially underrated Krumholtz. Paul Mescal won the British independent film award for All of Us Strangers, but it’s Jamie Bell’s finely etched work as a father reckoning with his emotional distance that tore me up.
Best supporting actress
Merve Dizdar – About Dry Grasses Hong Chau – Showing Up
Kerrie Hayes – Blue Jean
Marin Ireland – Eileen
Patti LuPone – Beau Is Afraid
It’s pleasing how much more global the Academy’s choices have become of late, thanks to the expansion of its membership. Though Hollywood
still dominates, non-English-language films and performances get a fairer shake than they used to. But much depends on the profile and pockets of the distributor: with little promotion, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s peak-form moral panorama About Dry Grasses never entered the conversation, even for Dizdar’s subtly scorching, Canneslaurelled work.
Best international feature
Godland
Perfect Days
The Taste of Things
Tótem
The Zone of Interest
Many might assume Palme d’Or and Golden Globe winner Anatomy of a Fall is the one to beat – but it isn’t eligible, the French Oscar selection committee having instead chosen lush epicurean romance The Taste of Things as their entry. That opens up the race. The Zone of Interest has a strong chance, though in the interests of spreading the wealth I’m rooting for an underdog in Iceland’s darkly magnificent colonial saga Godland.
Ellen E Jones Best picture
Occupied City
All of Us Strangers
Barbie
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest
Even this newly adventurous, postParasite Academy is unlikely to vote a four-and-a-half hour Holocaust documentary as best film, yet Steve McQueen’s Occupied City really is among the year’s greatest. Like Glazer’s equally affecting The Zone of Interest, it speaks to our past and our present with an urgency that elevates it above a diverse, competitive field. But I wouldn’t be sad if Barbie won either.
Best director
Andrew Haigh – All of Us Strangers Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest
Greta Gerwig – Barbie
Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things Celine Song – Past Lives
What a time to be alive and watching movies! Glazer, Lanthimos and Gerwig, all great directors, all working at the height of their powers. Meanwhile, Song’s debut is unbelievably assured, and Haigh’s decision to shoot his mystical family drama in his own childhood home demonstrates courageous vulnerability in the service of cinema.
It’s that which makes All of Us Strangers my pick to win.
Best actor
Leonardo DiCaprio – Killers of the Flower Moon
Jussi Vatanen – Fallen Leaves Colman Domingo – Rustin
Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer Murphy’s atomic death stare would be an acceptable winner, Bradley Cooper’s onanistic Maestro performance would not. Ideally, though, I’d like to see a second Oscar for DiCaprio. He’s deployed his fading teen idol looks to killer effect here, embodying not just one rumpled Romeo character, but white America as a whole. It’s Scorsese’s most effective actor collaboration since Taxi Driver.
Best actress
Emma Stone – Poor Things
Sandra Hüller – Anatomy of a Fall Natalie Portman – May December Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon
Greta Lee – Past Lives
Stone should win, and probably will, for her self-created steampunk siren, a performance both technically impressive and joyously life-affirming. If not, a win for Gladstone would provide an uplifting addendum to the Academy’s fraught history of aggressively overlooking Native American achievement (see Sacheen Littlefeather in 73), especially if it helps secure a distribution deal for Gladstone’s other film of last year, Native-made Fancy Dance.
Supporting actor
Ryan Gosling – Barbie
Paul Mescal – All of Us Strangers Robert Downey Jr – Oppenheimer Mark Ruffalo – Poor Things
Zoe Terakes – Talk to Me
Gosling’s performance is its own “supporting male” satire, but that may not be “Kenough”, when Robert Downey Jr is also on career-best form and non-binary Aussie actor Terakes is prompting a rethink of the category’s gender basis. Plus, who among us does not harbour a soft spot for Mark Ruffalo’s moustachioed misogynist in Poor Things? If only Terry-Thomas were still around to present the award.
Supporting actress
Sandra Hüller – The Zone of Interest Katherine Waterston – The End We
Start From
Danielle Brooks – The Color Purple Rosamund Pike – Saltburn
Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers Rosamund Pike is the only awardsworthy aspect of Emerald Fennell’s overhyped pseudo class satire, but she is very very good in it, deserving an Oscar for her Britpop banter alone. Katherine Waterston is the ideal friend in a climate crisis, but doesn’t have the industry momentum. Hüller, on the other hand, could just nab it, with two inscrutably icy performances in one year.
Best costume design
Jacqueline Durran – Barbie
David Crossman and Janty Yates – Napoleon
Holly Waddington – Poor Things Eunice Jera Lee – How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Eunice Jera Lee – Bottoms
Barbie has this one in the patent pink bag. Jacqueline Durran turned the dress-up doll into real-world fashion icon, then inspired audiences to arrive at the cinema in their own flirty fuchsia ’fits. Some recognition is also due to young costume designer Eunice Jera Lee, whose work in multiple exciting independent features captures the more organic gen Z look of the moment.