Favorites to Win the Oscars and Possible Surprises
Juan Carlos Ampie’s selection. Best Picture: Anora or Conclave; Actors: Demi Moore, Timothée Chalamet, Zoe Saldaña; International: I Am Still Here
By Carlos F. Chamorro (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – The 97th edition of the Academy Awards, from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Hollywood, is here. We spoke with film critic Juan Carlos Ampie about his predictions for the Oscars, including favorite movies and actors, and the possible surprises in the major film competition, which takes place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 2, 2025.
How is the competition for Best Picture shaping up, the possible winner according to the predictions, and your favorite? There are nine movies in the competition: El Brutalista, Conclave, Emilia Pérez, Anora, I Am Still Here, An Unknown Stranger, The Nickel Boys, and Wicked. Which one will win?
Juan Carlos Ampie: It’s very difficult to define a favorite; there’s not one you can clearly say is going to win, like when Titanic appeared. Probably, Anora has quite an advantage. It did well at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palme d’Or. It had some success in the art film circuit in the US, and it’s quite respected. Director Sean Baker has been working in independent cinema for several years and has a strong following in the industry. That works in its favor. Conclave could be the surprise; I enjoyed the movie, I liked it.
I watched it twice.
You see, it was kind of generational. Conclave is a delightful movie; it’s well made, entertaining, interesting, and has great actors. It’s in the middle range, which appeals to as many people as possible. I believe it’s between Anora and Conclave.
Wicked, which is the most popular and perhaps the one that has made the most money, has a problem because the producers decided to split the movie into two parts, and that dilutes the voting intention because everyone says, “Well, we’ll vote next year when the story is finished.” I think that ended up working against it.
If we go by what critics are saying in the US, the Best Picture is The Nickel Boys. However, the problem it faces when considering its impact at the Oscars is that it is a very ambitious narrative film. It’s unconventional, and that might alienate the average voter a bit.
What’s your favorite?
My favorite is El Brutalista. I know it probably won’t win, but I think it’s an excellent film.
It’s a 3-hour-and-30-minute film with an intermission, like in the days of Ben-Hur.
Exactly. It’s very interesting what director Brady Corbet is doing because he’s returning to that old format of popular Hollywood cinema to tell a story with a quite contemporary point of view. This is the story of a famous (Hungarian) Jewish architect who travels to the United States fleeing fascism. The film is presented and structured as an intimate epic, produced with the spirit of an independent film, meaning that you feel the resources are limited but are used in such a way that they don’t harm the movie. Yes, the duration is long, but it flies by like a bird; you don’t really feel the length.
And it’s not a coincidence that it’s nominated for Best Editing because usually, that rhythm is defined by the editor. And the intermission, I think the audience appreciates it because it gives them time to go to the bathroom, get some popcorn, and it’s nice. I used to watch films with intermissions when I was little. The nostalgia factor is powerful, and you realize the director is doing all of this intentionally.
Does the competition for Best Director follow the same trend as previous awards from other festivals?
Most likely, the award will be between Sean Baker for Anora and Brady Corbet for El Brutalista, which are the most substantial films. I don’t think Emilia Perez has much of a chance, even though it’s the film with the most nominations this year, with 13. Which, for me, is quite strange.
If anyone could surprise here, it might be French director Coralie Fargeat, who made the dark comedy called La Sustancia, starring Demi Moore, and she’s the favorite to win Best Actress.
You mentioned Emilia Perez, which has been involved in a major controversy regarding how the Mexican public reacted, pointing out the frivolity with which the film portrays victims of drug trafficking. But there’s another controversy regarding actress Karla Gascon, who is also nominated for Best Actress.
Emilia Perez is not a good film, and for me, it’s a mystery that it has 13 nominations. It has dominated the Oscar season with the scandals you mentioned. But, to my surprise, the industry seems to accept and celebrate it despite these scandals. It’s very revealing to me that for months, on social media, I saw Mexicans complaining about the quality of the movie and how it portrayed the country. But while that was happening, in the press and on US social media, I didn’t see any mention of that. Until a journalist, who resides in the US or writes for English-language media, highlighted some tweets by Karla Gascon related to United States culture or events like the George Floyd murder or a racist comment she made about the Oscars when Asian films won. So, for me, it was interesting to see how insular the Hollywood industry can be.
In the Best Actress category, besides Karla Gascon, there are Demi Moore, Niki Madison, and Fernanda Torres, the Brazilian actress from I Am Still Here. And on the other hand, Zoe Saldaña is nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Who has the best chances?
(Zoe) Saldaña does have a chance. It’s possible that within the industry, there’s a sense that it’s time to award her, and Karla Gascon may have burned her bridges. In the overall balance, her role is the most eye-catching because it’s a historic milestone. She’s the first trans actress nominated for an Oscar. However, outside the camera, she’s a public relations nightmare. Even before working in Emilia Perez, she was a very combative personality on social media and very polarizing. Simply the fact that she starred in Emilia Perez brought her to another level of visibility that revealed all the problematic sides of her personality.
So, who’s the favorite for Best Actress?
Demi Moore will win. I’d love to say Fernanda Torres will win, but I think the voters spread the awards around. So, they’ll give that movie the Best Foreign Film award.
Demi Moore is also a case similar to Zoe Saldaña’s in the sense that she’s the local girl. Plus, she’s been working in the industry for many years. People appreciate her personally, as she’s taking care of her ex-husband, Bruce Willis, who suffers from a terrible disease. So, there’s a lot of sympathy for her, regardless of the fact that she does a great job in the film. In fact, the best part of the film is her, and she’ll probably win.
Let’s talk about Best Actor. There’s strong competition between Adrien Brody, whom you mentioned in El Brutalista, Timothée Chalamet, who plays young Bob Dylan from 1961 to 1965 and also sings like Bob Dylan, and Ralph Fiennes, who plays the cardinal overseeing the conclave to elect the Pope. Who’s the favorite?
The favorite is Timothée Chalamet, for two reasons. First, it’s a good time to reward the new generation. This young man has been doing great work in films for several years. He’s been innocent in presenting himself as an actor who loves acting and wants to win an Oscar. The Actors Guild Awards just passed, where he won Best Actor, and his speech was along those lines. So, I think that attitude works in his favor, and also the fact that it’s a much more accessible movie compared to El Brutalista. It’s a much less harsh film. El Brutalista is a movie that could leave you with scars. So I think that will work in his favor.
And Best Foreign Film? Competing are the Brazilian film I Am Still Here, an Iranian film, and Emilia Perez competing as a foreign film.
Emilia Perez was the film chosen by France; the director is French, the entire creative team is French, and director Jacques Audiard is proud to say that he never stepped foot in Mexico, not even for research. He filmed in a studio in France and outdoors in France. So it has nothing Mexican about it, and France chose that film. Obviously, it did well at the Cannes Film Festival. It received good reviews in Europe. I imagine they did their calculations.
Also, the Latvian animated film Flow is competing as Best Foreign Film and is nominated as Best Animated Feature Film. They will likely award it as an animated feature and not in this category.
Similarly, the Brazilian film I Am Still Here is nominated for both Best Picture without qualifiers and Best Foreign Film. The Brazilian film is the favorite to win Best Foreign Film, and I think it truly deserves the award.
However, the Iranian film The Seed of the Sacred Fruit is extraordinary. If you compare it with the Brazilian film, both present a drama of repression based on real-life events, but the Brazilian film has a layer of humanism that comforts you a little while showing the harshness of that reality, and that comes through in Fernanda Torres’ performance. The Iranian film is harsher, and I think it offers no comfort. There’s something of comfort in the Brazilian film that is denied in the Iranian film. I’d say they are sister films, and I would recommend both to everyone, though they might give you a bit of post-traumatic stress if you lived in Nicaragua during 2018.
And for us Nicaraguans, these are stories that really hit home, that affect us.
Honestly, both films gave me a bit of flashbacks to what we lived through in Nicaragua in 2018.
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First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.