97th Oscars shortlist announced

With the nominations for the 97th Academy Awards announced, Emilia Pérez has broken records while The Brutalist, Dune: Part Two, Maria, and Nosferatu join it on the cinematography shortlist.

Let the record show that Emilia Pérez has broken records in the 2025 Academy Awards. It's won the most Oscar nominations for a non English-language film ever, with 13, beating the previous 10 of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma.

If it can convert all those in the night it will beat the 11 Oscars record held jointly by Ben-Hur, Titanic, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which remains a great film as long as you stop watching when Aragon gets crowned King of Gondor. An easier bar to vault over would be the 4 non-English language film Oscars held by 4 different movies; Fanny and Alexander, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Parasite, and All Quiet On The Western Front.

It's also, of course, another big win for Netflix.

Either way, it puts DoP, Paul Guilhaume, and Editor, Juliette Welfling, in the pound seats for their respective Cinematography and Film Editing awards (full shortlist below). Could it win, despite being generally acknowledged as the weakest of a list for Best Picture that includes Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, and Wicked? It's probably different enough to snag the Oscar voters' intentions and it would certainly piss off Donald Trump, which might be motivation enough for the Academy on its own. But the competition is strong, especially in the craft categories, with the remarkable The Brutalist, Dune: Part Two, and Nosferatu providing stuff competition for the Cinematography Award.

The 97th Oscars will still be held on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood and will be televised live  on ABC, streamed live on Hulu, and air live in more than 200 territories worldwide. People will wear nice frocks and a lot will be written about them.

Here are the lists for categories that tend to interest us. More here. 

Cinematography Nominees

The Brutalist: Lol Crawley

Dune: Part Two: Greig Fraser

Emilia Pérez: Paul Guilhaume

Maria: Ed Lachman

Nosferatu: Jarin Blaschke

Film Editing Nominees

Anora: Sean Baker

The Brutalist: David Jancso

Conclave: Nick Emerson

Emilia Pérez: Juliette Welfling

Wicked: Myron Kerstein

Sound Nominees

A Complete Unknown

Tod A. Maitland, Donald Sylvester, Ted Caplan, Paul Massey and David Giammarco

Dune: Part Two

Gareth John, Richard King, Ron Bartlett and Doug Hemphill

Emilia Pérez

Erwan Kerzanet, Aymeric Devoldère, Maxence Dussère, Cyril Holtz and Niels Barletta

Wicked

Simon Hayes, Nancy Nugent Title, Jack Dolman, Andy Nelson and John Marquis

The Wild Robot

Randy Thom, Brian Chumney, Gary A. Rizzo and Leff Lefferts

Visual Effects Nominees

Alien: Romulus

Eric Barba, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser, Daniel Macarin and Shane Mahan

Better Man

Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft and Peter Stubbs

Dune: Part Two

Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe and Gerd Nefzer

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes

Erik Winquist, Stephen Unterfranz, Paul Story and Rodney Burke

Wicked

Pablo Helman, Jonathan Fawkner, David Shirk and Paul Corbould