The American Motion Picture Academy announced Oscar nominations earlier this year, and the prestigious awards ceremony was moved to the beginning of February, which means that all film fans who traditionally like to see the nominated films before the awards ceremony, will be able to do so in cinemas during the 48th FEST. As expected, the Golden Globes highlighted favorites that were graced with the most Oscar nominations, such as Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Todd Phillips' Joker. It is evident that Netflix is taking over the primacy, and most of the nominations were given to this streaming platform for films that we will be denied to see on the big screen, such as Irishman by Martin Scorsese and Marriage Story of Noah Baumbach.
However, one of the Academy's favorites was Jojo Rabbit, which was nominated in six categories - Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Scarlett Johansson), Best Costume Design, Best Production Design and Best Film Editing. This film by eccentric New Zealand director Taika Waititi premiered in Toronto where it won the most important award of this festival - the Audience Award. It is a truly unique film in which Waititi balances perfectly on the verge of being serious and funny by telling the story of a lonely 10-year-old boy who has an imaginary friend Hitler and is deeply indoctrinated by Nazi ideology, but his whole world falls apart when he discovers his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic.
Cynthia Erivo, who brought to life one of the most famous women in American history - Harriet Tubman, fights for the Best Actress Oscar. Harriet is an exciting biographical account of this impressive woman and her journey from slave on plantation, to slave rights activist, and later to woman’s rights activist. Another biopic, Richard Jewell, brought Kathy Bates nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The film is based on true events that took place during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, when a security guard found a bomb and alerted authorities, only to later be wrongly accused of having placed the device himself to make himself a hero. Interestingly, this is the thirty-eighth film directed by the legendary Clint Eastwood, and although he is 89, he seems to have no intention of slowing down anytime soon.
The unusual horror film The Lighthouse was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Filmed in monochromatic technique, with only two actors (Robert Pattison and Willem Dafoe), the film depicts the gradual sinking into madness of two lighthouse keepers in the late 19th century. It is described as an intense, exciting and disturbing thriller of hypnotic quality.
In the running for Oscar, in the category for Best International Feature Film, is Corpus Christi, by a promising young Polish director Jan Komasa. This drama is inspired by a true story of a young man with a criminal history who experiences enlightenment in prison, and upon release takes on a mantle and begins to pretend to be a priest who takes over the parish of a small town.
It is time to start speculating on who will take home the golden statuettes on February 9, when the Academy Awards are held, and to begin preparing the Belgrade audience for the 48th FEST, whose programme we will release next week.
