The 97th annual Oscar nominations were revealed Thursday morning in Los Angeles. And the newest lineup featured a number of historic milestones. Among them this year:
Best Picture
- With 13 nominations, “Emilia Perez” is the most nominated non-English-language film of all time, beating the record of 10 nominations held by “Roma” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
- “Emilia Pérez” and “I’m Still Here” are also the 18th and 19th films predominantly not in the English language to be nominated for Best Picture. Both are nominated for Best International Feature – the first time ever that two nominees from that category have also been nominated for Best Picture.
- At 3:35, “The Brutalist” is the sixth-longest Best Picture nominee, a few minutes longer than two recent Martin Scorsese movies, “The Irishman” (3:29) and “Killers of the Flower Moon” (3:26). “Cleopatra,” from 1963, is the all-time longest Best Picture nominee at 4:11.
Acting categories
- Seven acting nominees are from musicals or music-related films: two from “Wicked,” two from “Emilia Perez” and three from “A Complete Unknown.”
- Cynthia Erivo (“Wicked”) is the second Black actress to be nominated twice for Best Actress in a Leading Role, after Viola Davis. Erivo was previously nominated for 2019’s “Harriet.”
- Timothée Chalamet (“A Complete Unknown”) is the second performer nominated for playing Bob Dylan, after Cate Blanchett for 2007’s “I’m Not There.”
- If Chalamet wins, he’ll be the second Oscar winner who portrayed an Oscar winner, after the aforementioned Blanchett. Bob Dylan won Best Song for 2000’s “Wonder Boys,” while Blanchett won for her role in “The Aviator” as four-time winner Katharine Hepburn.
- For the first time since the 1977 Oscars, when Diane Keaton won Best Actress for “Annie Hall,” all five nominees for Best Actress appear in movies nominated for Best Picture.
- Yura Borisov is the first Russian acting nominee since Mikhail Baryshnikov for 1977’s “The Turning Point.” Baryshnikov was born in a part of the then-Soviet Union which is now Latvia; he defected from the USSR to the United States in 1974.
- Nominees Isabella Rossellini (“Conclave”) and Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”) are the daughters of previous acting nominees. Rossellini’s mother Ingrid Bergman won three Oscars and Torres’ mother Fernanda Montenegro was nominated in 1999 for “Central Station.”
- A record six nominees are for performances entirely or partly in a language other than English: Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoe Saldaña (Spanish), Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones (Hungarian), Yura Borisov (Russian) and Fernanda Torres (Portuguese).
- Sebastian Stan (“The Apprentice”) is the first Romanian-born actor ever nominated in the Leading Actor category.
- Stan is also the only actor in Oscar history to score a nomination for portraying the sitting U.S. president when the nominated were announced. In addition to Stan’s performance as Donald Trump, actors have been nominated for playing John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.
Best Director
- Coralie Fargeat (“The Substance”) is the ninth woman nominated for directing and her nom marks the 10th time a woman has made the cut; director Jane Campion was nominated twice. Fargeat is the second French woman, following Justine Triet (“Anatomy of a Fall),” nominated here.
- Fargeat and Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Perez”) represent the first time two French directors have been nominated in the same year since 1975, when François Truffaut (“Day for Night”) and French-Polish Roman Polanski (“Chinatown”) were nominated.
- Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Perez”) and Sean Baker (“Anora”) are the sixth and seventh directors to be nominated for four Oscars in the same year. Audiard is up for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Song, while Baker was recognized for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Past four-pete club members include Orson Welles (“Citizen Kane”), Warren Beatty (“Heaven Can Wait” and “Reds”), the Coen Brothers (“No Country for Old Men”), Alfonso Cuarón (“Roma”) and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”).
Best Original and Adapted Screenplays
- Nine of the ten nominees were written or co-written by their directors – every nominee except for “Conclave,” written by Peter Straughan.
- Actor Clarence Maclin, though not nominated for his performance in “Sing Sing,” was nominated for his contribution to the film’s screenplay.
Best Cinematography
- The nomination for “Dune: Part Two” marks the first time that a sequel to an Oscar winner in this category has been nominated. The first “Lord of the Rings” and “Avatar” movies earned the statuette here, only to have their sequels get snubbed from the nominees lineup.
Best Animated Feature
- Latvia’s “Flow” is the second film to be nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best International Film, after 2021’s “Flee.”