January 23, 2025
by Carla Hay

With 13 nods, the Netflix’s “Emilia Pérez” (a Spanish-language musical about a transgender woman who becomes a former drug-trafficking crime boss) is the top nominee for the 97th Annual Academy Awards, which will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 2, 2025. ABC will have the U.S. telecast of the show, which will be hosted by Conan O’Brien and livestreamed on Hulu. The nominations were announced on January 23, 2025, by Bowen Yang and Rachel Senott.
The nominations for “Emilia Pérez” are Best Picture; Best Director (for Jacques Audiard); Best Actress (for Karla Sofía Gascón); Best Supporting Actress (for Zoe Saldaña); Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Film Editing; Best Cinematography; Best International Feature Film; Best Makeup and Hairstyling; Best Sound; and two nods for Best Original Song (for “El Mal” and “Mi Camino”).
The other contenders for Best Picture are Neon’s comedy/drama “Anora,” A24’s drama “The Brutalist,” Searchlight Pictures’ Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” Focus Features’ drama “Conclave,” Warner Bros. Pictures sci-fi/action film “Dune: Part Two,” Sony Pictures Classics’ drama “I’m Still Here,” Orion Pictures’ drama “Nickel Boys,” MUBI’s horror film “The Substance” and Universal Pictures’ musical “Wicked.” As of 2022, the Academy Awards rule is that no less than 10 movies can be nominated for Best Picture.
“The Brutalist” and “Wicked” had the second-highest number of Oscar nominations this year (10 nods each), followed by “A Complete Unknown” and “Conclave,” which had eight nods each. (Click here to read Culture Mix’s reviews of all these movies that are nominated for Best Picture.)
The awards are voted for by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For the 2025 ceremony, eligible movies were those released in the U.S. cinemas or in their native country in 2024.
Snubs and Surprises

Movies that have been getting awards or nominations elsewhere were completely snubbed by the Academy Awards. They include Amazon MGM’s drama “Challengers,” Roadside Attractions’ drama “The Last Showgirl,” Sony Pictures Classics’ music-oriented comedy “Kneecap” and several movies from Netflix: the drama “The Piano Lesson” and the documentaries “Daughters,” “Will & Harper” and “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin.”
Paramount Pictures’ “Gladiator II,” the sequel to 2000’s Oscar-winning “Gladiator,” proved to be an inferior sequel for Oscar nominations: “Gladiator Il” only received one Oscar nod (Best Costume Design), even though it was getting some Oscar buzz for the categories of Best Supporting Actor (for Denzel Washington) and Best Visual Effects. By contrast, the first “Gladiator” film had 12 Oscar nominations and won five Oscars, including Best Picture.
Also snubbed for the 2025 Oscar nominations: Daniel Craig of A24’s drama “Queer,” Marianne Jean-Baptiste of Bleecker Street’s drama “Hard Truths” and Selena Gomez of “Emilia Pérez,” who each received British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nominations for their performances in these movies. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and BAFTA have several of the same voters. There were no real surprises in the categories for actors and actresses because all of this year’s Oscar nominees in the actor/actress categories were nominated at least one other major awards show for movies.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was the Brazilian drama “I’m Still Here” getting nominated for Best Picture, edging out other movies that were predicted to get nominated for Best Picture, such as “Challengers,” “Sing Sing” and Searchlight Pictures’ “A Real Pain.” “I’m Still Here” has a total of three Oscar nods, with the other two nominations not as surprising: Best Actress (for Fernanda Torres) and Best International Feature Film.
The Sideshow/Janus Films animated movie “Flow” was expected to get a nod for Best Animated Feature Film. But many people did not expect “Flow” to also be nominated for Best International Feature Film because animated films are rarely nominated in this category. “Flow” (a no-dialogue film about animals surviving an environmental disaster) is the first movie from Latvia to be nominated for Oscars. Some of the Oscar shortlisted movies that ultimately did not get nominated for Best International Feature Film are “Kneecap” (Ireland), Janus Films’ “Vermiglio” (Italy), Metrograph Pictures’ “Santosh” (United Kingdom), and MUBI’s “Dahomey” (Senegal), which was also snubbed in the Oscar category of Best Documentary Feature Film.
Diversity and Inclusion

Racial diversity is in every actor/actress category at the 2025 Academy Awards, except for Best Supporting Actor, where all the nominees are white. Black people are represented the most with “Sing Sing,” which has three nominations: Best Actor (for Colman Domingo); Best Adapted Screenplay (two of the four “Sing Sing” nominees in this category are black: John “Divine G” Whitfield and Clarence Maclin); and Best Original Song (for “Like a Bird,” written by Abraham Alexander and Adrian Quesada). “Sing Sing” (based on a true story) is about a group of incarcerated men in a theater group at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. The screenplay is adapted from John H. Richardson’s 2005 nonfiction Esquire article “The Sing Sing Follies” and Brent Buell’s original play “Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code.”
Meanwhile, music composer Kris Bowers of DreamWorks Animation/Universal Pictures’ “The Wild Robot” is nominated for Best Original Score.”Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo, who identifies as black and queer, is nominated for Best Actress for “Wicked.” “Nickel Boys” director RaMell Ross is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, along with Joslyn Barnes.
Latin representation for Oscar nominees was most visible for “Emilia Pérez” (a movie that takes place in Mexico) even though it’s a movie from white French filmmakers and is technically considered a French film. “Emilia Pérez” co-star Gascón is from Spain, while Saldaña is a Dominican American who also identifies as Afro-Latina. Meanwhile, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser is one of the Best Visual Effects nominees for 20th Century’s “Alien: Romulus.”
Middle Easterners have noticeable representation with Oscar nominations. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” director Mohammad Rasoulof is nominated for Best International Feature Film. Even though Rasoulof is Iranian, the movie was funded by German producers and is representing Germany in this category. Palestinian directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal are nominated with Israeli directors Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham for “No Other Land” in the Best Documentary Feature Film category. “In the Shadow of Cypress” filmmakers Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi are nominated for Best Animated Short Film.
South Asian-heritage filmmakers who are Oscar-nominated this year are director Smriti Mundhra of “I Am Ready, Warden” (Best Documentary Short Film) and producer Suchitra Mattai of “Anuja” (Best Live Action Short Film). Filmmakers of Japanese heritage who received Oscar nominations include Shiori Itō of “Black Box Diaries” (Best Documentary Feature Film); Daisuke Nishio and Takashi Washio of “Magic Candles” (Best Animated Short Film); and Ema Ryan Yamazaki and Eric Nyari of “Instruments of a Beating Heart” (Best Documentary Short Film).
LGBTQ representation in the Oscar nominations can be found with “Emilia Pérez” star Gascón’s historic nomination as the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress. (Elliot Page of 2007’s “Juno” was nominated in the Best Actress category before he came out as a transgender man.) Openly gay entertainers Elton John and Brandi Carlile are nominated in the Best Original Song category for “Never Too Late” from the Disney+ documentary “Elton John: Never Too Late.” John (who has two Oscars in the category) and Carlile are two of the four Oscar-nominated songwriters for “Never Too Late.”
And although some Oscar categories are still dominated by male nominees (such as Best Visual Effects, Best Cinematography, Best Sound and Best Original Score), a few women are nominated in a small number of male-dominated categories. Coralie Fargeat of “The Substance” is nominated for Best Director. (Fargeat is also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, a category that has been more likely than Best Director to have female nominees.) Meanwhile, Juliette Welfling of “Emilia Pérez” is nominated for Best Film Editing, and singer/songwriter Camille Dalmais of “Emilia Pérez” is nominated for Best Original Score—two categories where female Oscar nominees are rare.
Here is the complete list of nominations for the 2025 Academy Awards:
Best Picture
“Anora”
“The Brutalist”
“A Complete Unknown”
“Conclave”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Emilia Pérez”
“I’m Still Here”
“Nickel Boys”
“The Substance”
“Wicked”
Best Director
Sean Baker (“Anora”)
Brady Corbet (“The Brutalist”)
James Mangold (“A Complete Unknown”)
Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”)
Coralie Fargeat (“The Substance”
Best Actor in a Leading Role
Adrien Brody (“The Brutalist”)
Timothée Chalamet (“A Complete Unknown”)
Colman Domingo (“Sing Sing”)
Ralph Fiennes (“Conclave”)
Sebastian Stan (“The Apprentice”)
Best Actress in a Leading Role
Cynthia Erivo (“Wicked”)
Karla Sofía Gascón (“Emilia Pérez”)
Mikey Madison (“Anora”)
Demi Moore (“The Substance”)
Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”)
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Yura Borisov (“Anora”)
Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”)
Edward Norton (“A Complete Unknown”)
Guy Pearce (“The Brutalist”)
Jeremy Strong (“The Apprentice”)
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Monica Barbaro (“A Complete Unknown”)
Ariana Grande (“Wicked”)
Felicity Jones (“The Brutalist”)
Isabella Rossellini (“Conclave”)
Zoe Saldaña (“Emilia Pérez”)
Best Adapted Screenplay
“A Complete Unknown,” screenplay by James Mangold and Jay Cocks
“Conclave,” screenplay by Peter Straughan
“Emilia Pérez,” screenplay by Jacques Audiard, in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi
“Nickel Boys,” screenplay by RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes
“Sing Sing,” screenplay by Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar; story by Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin and John “Divine G” Whitfield
Best Original Screenplay
“Anora,” written by Sean Baker
“The Brutalist,” written by Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
“A Real Pain,” written by Jesse Eisenberg
“September 5,” written by Moritz Binder and Tim Fehlbaum; co-written by Alex David
“The Substance,” written by Coralie Fargeat
Best Cinematography
“The Brutalist”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Emilia Pérez”
“Maria”
“Nosferatu”
Best Film Editing
“Anora,” Sean Baker
“The Brutalist,” David Jancso
“Conclave,” Nick Emerson
“Emilia Pérez,” Juliette Welfling
“Wicked,” Myron Kerstein
Best Sound
“A Complete Unknown”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Emilia Pérez”
“Wicked”
“The Wild Robot”
Best Original Score
“The Brutalist,” Daniel Blumberg
“Conclave,” Volker Bertelmann
“Emilia Pérez,” Clément Ducol and Camille
“Wicked,” John Powell and Stephen Schwartz
“The Wild Robot,” Kris Bowers
Best Original Song
“El Mal” from “Emilia Pérez” (Music by Clément Ducol and Camille; lyrics by Clément Ducol, Camille and Jacques Audiard)
“The Journey” from “The Six Triple Eight” (Music and lyrics by Diane Warren)
“Like a Bird” from “Sing Sing” (Music and lyrics by Abraham Alexander and Adrian Quesada)
“Mi Camino” from “Emilia Pérez” (Music and lyric by Camille and Clément Ducol)
“Never Too Late” from “Elton John: Never Too Late” (Music and lyrics by Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt and Bernie Taupin)
Best Animated Feature Film
“Flow”
“Inside Out 2”
“Memoir of a Snail”
“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”
“The Wild Robot”
Best International Feature Film
“I’m Still Here” (Brazil)
“The Girl With the Needle” (Denmark)
“Emilia Pérez” (France)
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Germany)
“Flow” (Latvia)
Best Documentary Feature
“Black Box Diaries”
“No Other Land”
“Porcelain War”
“Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
“Sugarcane”
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
“A Different Man”
“Emilia Pérez”
“Nosferatu”
“The Substance”
“Wicked”
Best Costume Design
“A Complete Unknown,” Arianne Phillips
“Conclave,” Lisy Christl
“Gladiator II,” Janty Yates and Dave Crossman
“Nosferatu,” Linda Muir
“Wicked,” Paul Tazewell
Best Production Design
“The Brutalist”
“Conclave”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Nosferatu”
“Wicked”
Best Visual Effects
“Alien: Romulus”
“Better Man”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”
“Wicked”
Best Documentary Short Subject
“Death by Numbers”
“I Am Ready, Warden”
“Incident”
“Instruments of a Beating Heart”
“The Only Girl in the Orchestra”
Best Animated Short Film
“Beautiful Men”
“In the Shadow of the Cypress”
“Magic Candies”
“Wander to Wonder”
“Yuck!”
Best Live-Action Short Film
“A Lien”
“Anuja”
“I’m Not a Robot”
“The Last Ranger”
“The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent”