A Year in Transition…

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced their nominations for the 2025 film year with a live-streaming announcement held on January 23, 2025, The announcement was hosted by actors Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott, where they presented the nominations for The 97th Academy Awards, or as they are known these days, the Oscars at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The Oscars will air live on Sunday, March 2, 2025, from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, and be televised on ABC. The ceremony will be produced by Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan, with Hamish Hamilton serving as director. Comedian and podcaster Conan O’Brien is set to host the show for the first time. Emilia Pérez received the most nominations with 13, followed by The Brutalist and Wicked with 10 each.

The Transitional Best…

The three films will compete along with Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys and The Substance for the big award of the night, Best Picture. The only female director nominated this year was Coralie Fargeat, who directed The Substance, she also picked up a nomination for writing, while star of the film Demi Moore scored her first Oscar nomination of her career, as did Isabella Rossolini for Conclave.

Emilia Pérez leads the 2025 Oscar nominations, the film scored 13 nominations, setting a record for a non-English-language film. It surpasses the previous record holders, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma, which each earned 10 nominations. The Brutalist and Wicked are tied for 10, while A Complete Unknown and Conclave followed with eight nominations each.

Transitional Records…

Karla Sofía Gascón, the Spanish-born star of Emilia Pérez made history as the first openly transgender performer to be honored, when nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Jacques Audiard picked up two nominations for the film, for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, while Zoe Saldaña was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.

Elsewhere more record were made when I’m Still Here star Fernanda Torres repeated her mother Fernanda Montenegro’s historic achievement from 1999 (for Central Station) becoming only the second Brazilian to be nominated in the best actress category. Other acting nominees include Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro for A Complete Unknown, Chalamet, meanwhile, follows James Dean as the youngest two-time best actor nominee. Ralph Fiennes for Conclave and Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, while Domingo sets his own record and is the first back-to-back Black best actor nominee since Denzel Washington. Among the other nominees are Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong for The Apprentice, Strong will compete in the same category as his former Succession co-star Kieran Culkin, nominated for A Real Pain.

Wickedly Brutal Transition…

Wicked’s nominations included acting nominations for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, while The Brutalist landed nominations for Brady Corbet the director, who is co-nominated for a writing nomination with Mona Fastvold, stars of the film alos recieved nominations with Adrien Brody for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce both recieved Supporting Role nominations. Jon M. Chu, however, was shut out of the directing category, which takes us to our snubs and surprises.

Transitional Snub to Surprise…

The 2025 Oscars nominations saw a slew of big names and Oscar favorites miss out on recognition. This included Angelina Jolie for Maria, Denzel Washington for Gladiator II, Nicole Kidman for Babygirl, Selena Gomez for Emilia Perez, Zendaya, director Luca Guadagnino and the entire Challengers team. The Guadagnino film received a complete snub after being an awards conversation all season, which lead to Golden Globe nominations for the film and star Zendaya, as well as as win for Best Score for previous Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticuss Ross.

Luca Guadagnino had two films making award season buzz, and his second film, Queer starring Daniel Craig also failed to receive a single nomination at the 2025 Oscars, including for Craig who was snubbed after being buzzed about as a possible Best Actor nominee. Two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington was also left out of the Best Supporting Actor category for his role in Gladiator II, despite recieving a Golden Globe nomination. The film only earned one nomination for Best Costume Design. Maria was another expected nominee after awards season talk, but only recieved one nomination for Best Cinematography, and failed to recieve a nomination for Best Actress for its star Angelina Jolie.

The trend of zero nominations after award season talk and predicted nominations continued with Nicole Kidman and her film Babygirl, which had racked up earlier nominations and awards earlier inthe season. The Last Showgirl starring Pamela Anderson and recent Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis landed SAG Awards nominations, but was completely snubbed for Oscar 2025 nominations. While those films underperformed, Robert Eggers’ vampire film Nosferatu over performed with four nominations including Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Production Design.

Over in the Best Picture category, Sing Sing, September 5 and A Real Pain were all snubbed for a nomination, despite nominations for Producers Guild Awards for the latter two films. The category also surprised with nominees Nickel Boys and I’m Still Here. It was thought that after Denis Villeneuve’s Dune performed well at the Oscars, expectations were high for its sequel, Dune: Part Two, but it missed out on some major categories the film was predicted to be nominated in, including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing. The film did, however, receive a Best Picture nomination, but snubbed Villeneuve for Best Director.

In the Best Supporting Actress category, both Margaret Qualley of The Substance and Selena Gomez of Emilia Pérez were snubbed on predicited nominations, while Monica Barbaro snuck in and surprised with a nomination for her role as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown. For Best Supporting Actor, Sing Sing‘s Clarence Maclin was a surprise snub for Actor in a Supporting Role, while Jeremy Strong recieved one for his role in The Apprentice. And though their films earned nominations for Best Picture, directors Edward Berger, Jon M. Chu and RaMell Ross were all snubbed for Best Director for Conclave, Wicked and Nickel Boys.

Firey Transition…

The announcement of the 97th Academy Awards Nominees was originally scheduled for Friday, January 17, 2025, but was delayed twice amid the Los Angeles wildfires, which have left at least 28 people dead with more than 14,000 structures destroyed and nearly 40,000 acres burned. The day voting was to open for this year’s nominees on Jan 8, the fires were still raging across Los Angeles and The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences extended the voting window theough Jan 14, with a plan to announce the nominations on January 19, 2025. The devastation, however, continued to unfold the following week, on Jan 13, and the Academy again extended the nominations voting window until Jan 17 and set a new announcement date of January 23, 2025.

The Academy has also made a donation of $1 million to the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s wildfire relief efforts, including an additional $250,000 that would’ve been spent on the cancelled Oscar nominees luncheon on Feb. 10. The Academy plans to move forward with this year’s Oscars but noted that the ceremony will also “honor Los Angeles.” The 97th Academy Awards, hosted by Conan O’Brien, will air live coast-to-coast on Sunday, March 2, 2025 from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, starting at 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. ET, continuing with the earlier start time the show debuted last year, on ABC and Hulu.

Tune in Oscar Sunday, March 2, 2025 to see which nominees become Academy Award history when the winners are announced during the awards ceremony live on ABC!

You can check out my Complete List for the 97th Academy Awards 2025 nominees below!

BEST PICTURE:

BEST DIRECTOR:

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE:

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE:

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM:

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM:

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM:

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:

BEST ORIGINAL SONG:

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:

BEST COSTUME DESIGN:

BEST FILM EDITING:

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING:

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN:

BEST SOUND:

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM:

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM:

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM: