Anonymous Oscar Ballot: Director Embraces ‘Anora,’ ‘A Complete Unknown,’ ‘Sing Sing,’ and ‘Wicked’ – IndieWire
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We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.With final Oscar balloting closed on February 18, we’re continuing with our seventh annual series of interviews with Academy voters from different branches for their unfiltered takes on what got picked, overlooked, and overvalued in the 2025 award season. Voter’s picks are in bold. Interview edited for brevity.Best Picture“Anora.” I went with “A Complete Unknown” for such a long time, for two months before I saw “Anora.” Just the balancing act of the humor, the tension, the male gaze sexiness, and [Anora’s] character being so aggressive and tough and not taking shit, this long-lost child inside. When that last scene happened, it broke your heart, and [Mikey Madison] was so good in it. And the boyfriend [Mark Eydelshteyn], from the moment he walked on the screen, I wanted to do violence to him. Every chance she gets, she would go in his lap and snuggle up and there’d be no conversation. He would be playing those games, and they did nothing but stimulate themselves. It says so much about people like that.
Related Stories ‘Maria,’ ‘Nickel Boys,’ ‘Shōgun,’ and More Win at the 2025 ASC Awards SAG Awards Spread the Love as ‘Conclave’ and Timothée Chalamet Head for the Oscars It looks like it’s happening in front of you. And [Sean Baker]’s been doing that style from the beginning — that is hard to achieve. He directed it, but it doesn’t feel like it was directed. It feels like he happened to be in the right place with the camera, and that’s a subtle difference. I look forward to more.“A Complete Unknown,” I have zero distance. The second album I ever bought was “The Times They Are A-changin’.” I wore the grooves off it. And I got it for my 18th birthday. And then I went to a concert in Forest Hills two weeks after Newport, and saw the same thing. “Wow, people, he did folk!” People liked it. Then he did rock, and everyone booed. So, I have no distance from it. I can watch it over and over again. I’ve seen it twice, okay? I know so much about Dylan. I don’t mind all the moving around of the pieces of his life to make the story better. Having had experience doing musical biopics, you have to present the music so it carries the story forward. You don’t stop the movie to watch someone sing. Then you end up with that Clint Eastwood movie [“Jersey Boys”] about The Four Seasons and Frankie Valli. So the achievement of the director and the achievement of the movie was that the songs were a major character. And you felt them, and you listened to the words all over again, and Timothée Chalamet sang them with such care and feeling. So I love the movie.
“Emilia Pérez” is so daring. It’s preposterous to believe that this guy [Manitas] could change himself over and no one could figure it out. So I admire: “How can I suspend reality enough to make everyone come along with me on this?” And [Jacques Audiard] did it by making it a musical. Because in a musical, reality is what you create. The movie was seamless. But discussions afterwards with friends have made me step back from from my enthusiasm for it in terms of how awful the drug trade is in Mexico, and how many people have died at the hands of it.“The Brutalist” was like the concrete buildings. I couldn’t. I just kept hitting the wall. Everything about it is excellent, but I couldn’t get into it. I admired its artistry and the sheer effort: they made this one for [under $10 million].“Wicked,” I saw at the Academy, and it was thrilling, and I haven’t thought about it again until this week’s WTF with Mark Maron and Ariana Grande. She is a thoughtful person. Coming away from “Wicked,” I was dazzled by the production design, but Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were just phenomenal. It was an achievement.“The Substance” did not go over very well at the Academy, but I loved it. There is so much Riot Girl punk energy in this movie. If we’re looking for a connective theme this year, it’s the emergence in mainstream of these kind of movies. And who knows what the mainstream is anymore, of female rage?
“Nickel Boys” is our hope for the future. That and [documentary feature] “Soundtrack for a Coup d’Etat” are both so brilliantly edited and put together in ways that are expressive. These movies present this information in a way that’s truly exciting and makes it work on several levels.Best Director“Anora” director Sean Baker. I did my homework this year. I’ve been going back and looking at everybody’s movies who I didn’t know. I had seen “Tangerine” and “Florida Project.” I went back and I watched “Starlet” on Criterion and “Red Rocket.” The really good filmmakers, you can see it from the beginning. Now I see the connective tissue. And how all these things he was interested in have come together in this film, the tension of it, and the humor and the slapstick for those henchmen, they’re hilarious and incredible. It is so hard to do. “A Complete Unknown” director James Mangold knows how to entertain. He’s a good director. I have never shown “Ford v. Ferrari” to anybody who didn’t have a damn good time. He takes a complex subject that may not be for everybody. “A Complete Unknown” was truly entertaining. And the weight of the movie ended up with Pete Seeger [Edward Norton]. And the director found the way to personify something that gave him conflict that we may not care that much about, which is traditional folk versus someone who’s changing the music forever. That’s pretty arcane, but also moving.
Going back and seeing “Dheepan” and relooking at “Rust and Bone” and “The Prophet” and so forth, Jacques Audiard, the director of “Emelia Pérez,” is a world-class director.I look to the future for the director of “The Substance,” [Coralie Fargeat].Best Actress“I’m Still Here” is another family saga: it’s the strength of the mother. I voted for that performance, Fernanda Torres. I’m all for Demi Moore giving us her “My name is Mrs. Norman Maine” speech. We need that on the Oscars, and I hope she wins. But [Fernanda Torres] was the thread that carried you along in “I’m Still Here.”Best ActorAdrien Brody shoulders [“The Brutalist”]. He’s in every frame of it, and he makes a truly unpleasant, artistic man understandable. He’s driven and cannot be pushed down. I would hate to have dinner with him and Bob Dylan at the same time, there could not be two more unpleasant people, plus the amount of smoking would drive you crazy.So the non-smoking performance of the year was Colman Domingo in “Sing Sing.” He should be the MVP every year. He’s in the batting order: “Oh, okay, he’s up at the plate.” I’m going with Domingo over Timothée Chalamet. Best Supporting ActressZoe Saldaña was: “I know you’ve been here all these years.” Well, finally, we’re noticing it was the performance of the year. She carried “Emilia Pérez.”
Felicity Jones in a tough situation [arriving in the second half], made an impression [in “The Brutalist”]. After listening to Ariana Grande on Mark Maron and all the SNL stuff, I thought, “We’re going to see her again. She’s just a super talent.”Best Supporting Actor [Edward Norton]. One of the best parts of [“A Complete Unknown”] was the anchoring of Pete Seeger. This crucial change that [Mangold] made is the scene where Dylan sings “The Song for Woody,” for Woody Guthrie and [Seeger] at the beginning, which is not when it happened, but it may as well have been. The look on those two men’s faces: “we are witnessing somebody being born.” It’s like in “Amadeus” when Salieri invites [Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart] to lunch and plays this piece of music, and then Amadeus plays it upside down and backwards after hearing it once: “Okay, this is the real deal.”Best Adapted ScreenplayI voted for “Sing Sing.” [Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley] told the story really well.Best Original Screenplay I voted for, oddly enough, the movie that should have been nominated for editing: “September 5.” The screenplay put together these real events and and juggled them around with what footage they had. Best CinematographyWe are now in an age of special effects and cinematography being difficult to judge. The standards are so high, the ability of these artists to pull this stuff off. When you look at cinematography, Ed Lachman is such a serious artist. On “Maria,” he doesn’t just shoot a movie. He builds cameras to capture something.
In “Emilia Pérez,” the cinematography was so fluid, and the camera movements that go between the director and the DP carry you across those intense transitions to music. You can light scenes [with] LEDs, and you can change the color temperature of each light: they did that. Color temperature is now off the scale in terms of quality for everything we see.I didn’t make it all the way through “Nosferatu.” I’ve seen this movie, having seen the silent versions and so forth. You know them all. It doesn’t mean the cinematography and the production design weren’t thrilling.Best Costume Design The “Wicked” costumes are gorgeous. Beyond that, if we’re talking about how to make a movie, the management skills on that movie, the size of that cast — I have made a few musicals, and I know what happens to costumes between takes, everyone gets sweated up, and you gotta change everything.Best Documentary FeatureThe documentary features are also worthy. “Black Box Diaries,” wow. But then I saw the chances creatively that they took with the story of Patrice Lumumba in [“Soundtrack for a Coup d’Etat”] and seeing those jazz artists and understanding how insidious contemporary colonialism is. But the disjunctive editing style threw [some people] off: they couldn’t follow it. In all this voting I’m voicing: “we should try new things.”
Best Editing For the sheer effort, “Wicked.”“Anora” is a great study in character editing, helping those mood swings. The humor is how you cut the scenes. It’s there. Can you dig it out and yet still not lose the tension? [Mikey Madison] carries “Anora” without ruining the movie.Best International Feature FilmSo the international pictures, once again, they’re the best in show. They are the strength of world cinema. I said, “[‘Emilia Pérez’] is the one.” But then I saw “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.” When you think about making that movie in secret, about the commitment, and you live with what those people are going through… that knocked me out. “Flow” is amazing. I was thrilled.Best Makeup and Hairstyling“The Substance,” because everyone comes out of the theater grossed out. That’s hard to do these days.Best Production DesignI went with “Wicked,” because I saw in the bake-off the building of the train. So much detail, so much effort, so beautiful. The production design was suitably gaudy. The best thing about “Gladiator II” was Arthur Max’s production design.Best Original Score“The Brutalist”Best Original Song“El Mal” (“Emilia Pérez”)Best SoundThey all work. They all are beautifully mixed. But “A Complete Unknown” beautifully integrated the songs. The art of making a musical bio is how you layer in the songs and the drama, and you can’t let the drama stop when the song finishes. That is the gift. The music editing was superb. We know and love these songs and through editing they were seamlessly integrated. Especially the non-Dylan songs for context. Nothing is more fun in the editing room than a needle drop that works!
Best Visual EffectsThis was tough, because “Kingdom of the Planet of The Apes” is so convincing, and the eight performances are terrific. And “Alien: Romulus” is as good as those alien movies can get. But I’ve never seen anything like “Wicked,” so I went with that.Best Documentary ShortThe world is in such terrible shape right now, I could not bear to watch five more shorts about how terrible it is. Best Live Action ShortIt was really tough between “A Lien” and “The Last Ranger.” The problem with some of these things is you’re voting for the cause. I ended up voting for “The Last Ranger.”Best Animated Feature, Shorts. I didn’t watch them. By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.
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