The main competitors at the Oscars are “The Sinners” and “Battle after Battle.” Both films were released by Warner Bros., which is about to be acquired by Netflix.

What intrigue is there in this, says Anton Dolin

Candidates for the 98th Academy Awards have been announced in Los Angeles. The nominees for Best Picture are Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty the Magnificent, Battle After Battle, Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Train Dreams. Meduza film critic Anton Dolin talks about these and other favorites of the upcoming ceremony.

The American Academy added a new one to the list of nominations - for best casting, and, partly thanks to this, a record was broken. Now the most nominated film in Oscar history is Ryan Coogler's The Sinners , which has been collecting praise and awards for the past year. They have 16 nominations, including the most important: film, directing, screenplay, acting. The previous leaders - the films "All About Eve", "Titanic" and "La La Land" - had 14 each.

In itself, the leadership of “Sinners” is quite sensational: it’s as if a commercial genre film, less than five minutes of horror, suddenly broke the usual system of hierarchies, and, in addition, became a box office hit. Although Ryan Coogler has been recognized by the Academy more than once - and his “Black Panther” at the Oscars was considered an auteur blockbuster, not a Marvel mainstream one.

Of course, leading in the number of nominations does not mean victory. The most promising contender for the title of best film of the year remains Paul Thomas Anderson's Battle After Battle . It seems that all of Hollywood unanimously hopes that luck will finally smile on the director - and he will be recognized as the best. Moreover, it is deserved: the picture hit the nerve and fully expressed the spirit of the times. Thirteen nominations for “Battle after Battle” is also an impressive result.

Fingers crossed, we wish Anderson luck. Apart from "Sinners", it has no serious competitors. But there is a funny nuance: both films were produced by the same studio - Warner Bros., the most successful and risky producers of the season (they also made “Superman”, “Guns” and many other discussed films of 2025). It turns out that they are competing with themselves - one way or another, they will go on stage for the most important of the prizes. The question is whether they will lobby academics for a particular solution and whether Warner has its own internal favorite. It is also interesting what role this intrigue plays in the deal either with Netflix or with Paramount : let us remind you that Warner themselves chose the first of the buyers, but President Donald Trump is campaigning for the latter.

If we return to the nominated films, four remarkable films stand out among them.

Josh Safdie's sports tragicomedy "Marty the Magnificent," Guillermo del Toro's impressively entertaining "Frankenstein" (but he didn't get a directing nomination, which is a bad sign) and Norwegian Joakim Trier's drama "Sentimental Value" each received nine mentions.

Director Chloe Zhao is slightly behind them - like del Toro, she already won the Oscars once, with Nomadland, and now she has returned with the tragic Hamnet about the death of William Shakespeare's son. The film is mentioned eight times. Could this prevent the triumph of one of the two contenders from Warner Bros.? It doesn't look like it.

The only foreigner on the elite list of nominated directors is Joakim Trier. Neither the Brazilian Kleber Mendonça Filho with “Secret Agent” (but the film had four nominations, including for film of the year) nor the Iranian Jafar Panahi managed to get into the category. However, his “A Simple Chance” was included in the “international” list (and received a nomination for the original screenplay). The Spanish “Sirat” by Oliver Lachey, who also received a well-deserved nomination for sound, and the Tunisian “The Voice of Hind Rajab” by Kaouther Ben Hania are in the same list, but are clearly outsiders.

Surprisingly, the list of nominees for the title of best picture includes the pretentious and poetic “Train Dreams” by Clint Bentley (the film was not really released, but immediately went to Netflix) and the purely spectacular and entertaining “Formula 1” by Joseph Kosinski. Each has four nominations.

The fight for acting awards, as always, will be the most intense and will certainly bring surprises. So far, the favorites seem to be Jessie Buckley, who played Shakespeare's grieving wife in Hamnet, and Timothée Chalamet, who played ping-pong masterfully in Marty the Magnificent. Leonardo DiCaprio will probably be left with nothing again - but he’s no stranger to it, and in “Battle after Battle” he played a loser, so he won’t even have to get into character.

In the Best Supporting Actor category, the main competitors are probably Sean Penn (Battle After Battle) and Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value). The favorite of the season among actresses in a similar category is Teyana Taylor (“Battle after Battle”).

The participation of Russian-speaking filmmakers, which seemed significant at the time the shortlists were announced, was ultimately limited to two films - which, however, is also impressive. The list of documentaries includes “Mr. Nobody against Putin,” made by the American David Borenstein in collaboration with Pavel Talankin, an employee of the Ural school who fled from the Russian Federation. In the animation category - “Three Sisters”, made by twice nominated Konstantin Bronzit and submitted to the Academy under a pseudonym.

The Oscars will be presented on March 15 in Los Angeles. The ceremony will be hosted by comedian Conan O'Brien.

Anton Dolin