Most Nominations – Oppenheimer/Poor Things – 12 

Best Picture 

• Oppenheimer 
• Barbie 
• Killers of the Flower Moon 
• Poor Things 
• The Holdovers 
• Past Lives 
• American Fiction 
• Maestro  
• Anatomy of a Fall 
• The Zone of Interest  

Alt – The Color Purple 

Best Director  

• Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer 
• Martin Scorsese – Killers of the Flower Moon 
• Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things 
• Greta Gerwig – Barbie  
• Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest  

Alt – Bradley Cooper – Maestro 

Best Actor  

• Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer 
• Bradley Cooper – Maestro  
• Paul Giamatti – The Holdovers 
• Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction 
• Leonardo DiCaprio – Killers of the Flower Moon 

Alt – Zac Efron – The Iron Claw 

Best Actress 

• Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon 
• Emma Stone – Poor Things 
• Carey Mulligan – Maestro  
• Sandra Huller – Anatomy of a Fall 
• Margot Robbie – Barbie  

Alt – Greta Lee – Past Lives  

Best Supporting Actor 

• Robert Downey Jr – Oppenheimer 
• Ryan Gosling – Barbie 
• Charles Melton – May December 
• Mark Ruffalo – Poor Things 
• Robert De Niro – Killers of the Flower Moon 

Alt – Dominic Sessa – The Holdovers 

Best Supporting Actress 

• Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers  
• Danielle Brooks – The Color Purple 
• Emily Blunt – Oppenheimer 
• Julianne Moore – May December  
• Rachel McAdams – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret  

Alt – Jodie Foster – Nyad  

Best Original Screenplay 

• The Holdovers 
• Past Lives 
• Anatomy of a Fall 
• May December  
• Maestro 

Alt – Saltburn 

Best Adapted Screenplay 

• Barbie 
• Oppenheimer 
• Killers of the Flower Moon 
• Poor Things 
• American Fiction 

Alt – All of Us Strangers 

Best Animated  

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 
• The Boy and the Heron 
• Elemental 
• Nimona  
• The Peasants  

Alt – The Super Mario Bros. Movie  

Best Documentary 

• Beyond Utopia  
• Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie 
• 20 Days in Mariupol 
• The Eternal Memory  
• American Synphony  

Alt – Four Daughters 

Best International  

• The Zone of Interest  
• The Taste of Things 
• Fallen Leaves 

• Society of the Snow 
• The Promised Land 

Alt – Perfect Days 

Best Cinematography  

• Oppenheimer 
• Killers of the Flower Moon 
• Poor Things 
• Maestro  
• The Zone of Interest  

Alt – Saltburn 

Best Costume Design  

• Barbie  
• Poor Things 
• The Color Purple  
• Wonka  
• Killers of the Flower Moon 

Alt – Wonka 

Best Production Design  

• Barbie  
• Poor Things 

• Killers of the Flower Moon 
• Asteroid City  
• Oppenheimer 

Alt – The Color Purple  

Best Film Editing  

• Oppenheimer 
• Poor Things 
• Killers of the Flower Moon 
• Maestro 
• Barbie 

Alt – The Holdovers  

Best Make-Up and Hairstyling  

• Maestro  
• Poor Things 
• Oppenheimer 
• Society of the Snow 
• Golda 

Alt – Killers of the Flower Moon 

Best Original Score  

• Oppenheimer 

• Killers of the Flower Moon 
• Poor Things 
• The Boy and the Heron 
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 

Alt – Barbie 

Best Original Song  

• Barbie – “What was I made for?” 
• Barbie – “I’m Just Ken”  
• Rustin – “Road to Freedom” 
• The Color Purple – “Keep it Movin”  
• Flamin’ Hot – “The Fire Inside” 

Alt – Barbie – “Dance the Night” 

Best Sound  

• Oppenheimer  
• Killers of the Flower Moon 
• Maestro  
• Ferrari  
• The Zone of Interest  

Alt – The Killer 

Best Visual Effects  

• Poor Things 
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 
• The Creator  
• Godzilla Minus One 
• Society of the Snow  

Alt – Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 

Directed Jonathan Glazer. Starring Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller. 2023.

In 1943, the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife, Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house right next to the concentration and extermination camp he helped create.

The walls of the garden to the Höss house, where children play and adults garden so pleasantly, immediately backs on to Auschwitz and the horrors it holds. Throughout the film we are shown very little of the actual camp, but within the paradise the family has built in this house, we hear horrors from afar. The screams of the dying, the smell of the smoke, the glow of the flames, all lingering over everything we see.

In the lead role, Friedel plays the infamous commandant of Auschwitz, Höss, as a efficient middle-manager, with a thin, needling voice, who has had a rapid rise up the Nazi party and is trying to maintain his position. Every room he enters, he fantasises about the most cost and speed effective way he could slaughter them all. He is a caring parent but has no comprehension of the worth of life. A monster wrapped up in a tiny man, filing papers.

Sandra Hüller, who also stars this year in Anatomy of a Fall, gives a radically different performance in this film. Hedwig is a woman who cares greatly for her garden and the home she builds for her family, but has truly no care for human life outside of this. The horrors of the holocaust don’t concern her in the slightest, and her outbursts of panic and violence only come when she is inconvenienced personally. Hüller manages to make her both a true personification of evil, and also a complex central character.

Sound mixing and editing is often the most underappreciated and little understood parts of every film, but in The Zone of Interest, it is the heart of everything. The deafening, soul shaking noises that reverberate through the film, showing us the horror happening just off screen while the camera hangs on the paradise garden the family inhabit. It deserves awards.

Jonathan Glazer makes very few films, but when he does make one, it is truly the most unique and thought provoking of any given year. There is not a commercial bone in his body, he is purely focused on the story he wants to tell and the emotion he wants to leave the audience feeling,

Staring down into the darkness, the very depths of hell represented in the mundanity of a building staircase, Höss seems to almost see the horror his life has brought, and then slowly continue his descent all the same. The most bone-chilling evil resonates through every shot here, and Glazer has produced not just a reflection of the past, but a warning for the future.

Directed by Andrew Haigh. Starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal and Claire Foy. 2023

In Andrew Haigh’s All of us Strangers, one night in his near-empty London tower block, screenwriter Adam has a chance encounter with mysterious neighbour Harry, puncturing the rhythm of his everyday life. As a relationship develops between them, Adam finds himself drawn back to his childhood home, where his parents appear to be living just as they were on the day they died 30 years ago.

In this ghostly tale of rediscovery and connection, Haigh beautifully merges an exploration of grief with a complex and effective look at the queer experience in its many intricacies. With striking imagery of the empty flat block, immediately evoking classic ghost stories, we place Scott’s Adam at the heart of it. The screenplay does have a few twists and big character shifts, but the heart of this film is the tender and realistic dialogue. Characters feel like real people, talking about things we can all relate to and therefore pulling us right in to the heart of the story.

As much as all the other crafts and actors are key to this film working so well, there is no film without the layered performance Andrew Scott gives. At once a bored and lonely man, in the middle of his life and unfamiliar with romantic relationships, and then immediately transformed as a 12 year old again in a man’s body. His interaction with his parents is breathtaking in its normlacy, at once his age peers and also a clear dynamic of parent and child. It would have been so easy to get this performance wrong, but Scott strikes the correct note at every turn and gives the performance of his lifetime.

Paul Mescal, who has made a niche for himself in soulful and introspective dramas like Normal People and Aftersun, again delivers a stunning performance. This time however, it is a supporting role and much more of a broken and troubled man, but equally kind and caring. He immediately makes you root for him and Adam’s relationship, while never losing the pain that is always on the surface.

In the role of the parents, confronted with the adult son they never got to see grow, and the mistakes they made during their lives, both Foy and Bell shine. These are complex roles, and demand a lot from their actors. Foy is the perfectly portrayed 1980s mother, deeply caring and proud of her son, but also with ingrained homophobia and fear at the thought of her son being gay, which was a common part of the culture of the time, and this is portrayed so delicately. Bell on the other hand keeps his emotions surprisingly right at the surface, with a scene featuring him and Scott reminiscing on why he “never came into your room when you were crying” being a devastating emotional centrepiece.

As a critic it is often important to keep an objective view, whilst also feeding in your own experiences and influences into your thoughts. For me, as someone who lost a parent at a young age, I feel a deeply personal connection to this film and the presentation of grief and desire for more time with loved ones. The ache hiding silently behind all you other emotions, always waiting to come out when you least expect it. Sometimes grief is much less about the pain of losing a loved one, and much more the pain of wondering what life would have been like if you had more time with them.

Haigh and Scott have created a ghostly reflection on love, grief and the void in-between. This is the film of the festival and likely of the year.

Most Predicted Wins

Everything Everywhere all at Once – 6

Best Picture

Winner = Everything Everywhere all at Once

Runner Up = All Quiet on the Western Front

Best Director

Winner = Daniels – Everything Everywhere all at Once

Runner Up = Steven Spielberg – The Fabelmans

Best Actor

Winner = Austin Butler – Elvis

Runner Up = Brendan Fraser – The Whale

Best Actress

Winner = Michelle Yeoh – Everything Everywhere all at Once

Runner Up = Cate Blanchett – TAR

Best Supporting Actor

Winner = Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere all at Once

Runner Up = Barry Keoghan – The Banshees of Inisherin

Best Supporting Actress

Winner = Kerry Condon – The Banshees of Inisherin

Runner Up = Jamie Lee Curtis – Everything Everywhere all at Once

Best Original Screenplay

Winner = Everything Everywhere all at Once

Runner Up = The Banshees of Inisherin

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner = Women Talking

Runner Up = All Quiet on the Western Front

Best Animated Feature

Winner = Pinocchio

Runner Up = Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Best Documentary Feature

Winner = Navalny

Runner Up = All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Best International Feature

Winner = All Quiet on the Western Front

Runner Up = Argentina, 1985

Best Cinematography

Winner = All Quiet on the Western Front

Runner Up = Bardo

Best Film Editing

Winner = Everything Everywhere all at Once

Runner Up = Top Gun: Maverick

Best Production Design

Winner = Babylon

Runner Up = All Quiet on the Western Front

Best Costume Design

Winner = Elvis

Runner Up = Babylon

Best Make-Up and Hairstyling

Winner = Elvis

Runner Up = The Whale

Best Sound

Winner = Top Gun: Maverick

Runner Up = All Quiet on the Western Front

Best Visual Effects

Winner = Avatar: The Way of Water

Runner Up = N/A (or All Quiet on the Western Front)

Best Original Score

Winner = Babylon

Runner Up = All Quiet on the Western Front

Best Original Song

Winner = “Naatu Naatu” – RRR

Runner Up = “Hold My Hand” – Top Gun: Maverick