The 2025 Oscar nominees were announced on January 23 and speculation, as well as controversy, has been in the air ever since. This year marks the 97th iteration of the Academy Awards ceremony, which will be broadcast live on March 2, 2025. The film with the most nominations this year is Emilia Pérez, with 13 total nominations including best picture. Both The Brutalist and Wicked are next in the list, with 10 nominations each, followed by A Complete Unknown and Conclave with 8 nominations to their name. All of these films will compete with Anora, The Substance, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys and Dune: Part Two for the coveted award of best picture.
Other notable nominations include Coralie Fargeat, director of the break-out body horror film The Substance, the only woman nominated in the category of best director. Demi Moore received her very first nomination for best actress for her role in the same film. Karla Sofía Gascón also received a nomination for best actress for her performance in Emilia Pérez, making her the first openly trans woman to be nominated for the award. 29 year old Timothée Chalamet received a best actor nomination for his musical performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, making him the youngest multiple best actor nominee since James Dean. Robert Eggers’ vampire adaptation Nosferatu also acquired more nominations than many expected, with four nominations in cinematography, costume design, makeup and hairstyling, and production design.
One of the bigger surprises of the nomination announcement was the absence of any nominations for Challengers, Luca Guadagnino’s tennis love triangle flick that received critical and audience success in early 2024. There were no nominations given for Zendaya or any of the cast nor for the Golden Globe-winning soundtrack by previous Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Gladiator II also underperformed in the eyes of many, only being nominated for one Oscar for the film’s costume design. While Dune: Part Two received nominations for best picture, visual effects, sound, production design, and cinematography, it missed out on nominations that many expected the film to sweep. Most notably, director of the film Denis Villeneuve was not nominated for best director.
In the few weeks since the nominations were announced, a number of controversies have emerged, mainly regarding the films in the running for best picture. Both The Brutalist and Emilia Perez used AI tools to modify actor’s voices, which sparked uproar among many online. The Brutalist used a program from AI company Respeecher, in order to touch up Hungarian dialogue from lead actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, adding specific sounds and letters to their lines to create more authentic dialects. After social media users criticized this decision as a form of cutting corners for the actor’s performance, the director of film, Brady Corbet, told the Hollywood Reporter “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own […] The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicity’s performances in another language, not to replace or alter them and done with the utmost respect for the craft.” It was also revealed that Emilia Pérez used similar technology to enhance the singing voice of lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón.
Gascón saw even more backlash recently as several tweets from 2020–2023 came to light in which she “railed against Muslims, called for Islam to be banned and referred to George Floyd as ‘a drug addict and a hustler,” writes CBC. This has led to Gascón being seemingly completely dropped from Netflix’s Oscar campaign for the film and to many, reducing her chances of winning any awards. In an hour-long interview with CNN that the actress set up, she offered her “most sincere apologies to all the people who may have felt offended,” but denied being racist in any way. “I cannot step down from an Oscar nomination because I have not committed any crime nor have I harmed anyone. I am neither racist nor anything that all these people have tried to make others believe I am.” Others speculate that this controversy will harm Emilia Perez’s chances overall.
The award ceremony, hosted by Conan O’Brian, will stream live Sunday, March 2 at 8pm AST.
