The Next Oscar Scandal is Already Brewing
Are we on the verge of an #OscarsSoMale redux? Plus: What's vibing at NYFF
Happy Monday and happy hangover recovery for anyone still feeling the effects of Friday’s opening night party for the New York Film Festival at Tavern on the Green. I’m watching the festival from afar this year, but I remain fascinated by its unique place in the awards season landscape, and connected with one strategist who helped me realize why it’s one of the few stops in the season where movies aren’t just exciting, but feel like actual art.
But first, I received a reader question that got me thinking about what could be a scandal ahead for this awards season. Fresh off the Barbie director snub so egregious it inspired a tweet from Hillary Clinton, could yet another all-male best director lineup prompt a fresh wave of backlash? Kenough already!
'And Here are the All-Male Nominees'
Last week I received a question from a reader (hi Alexander!) that put a point on something that’s been lingering in the back of my mind for the past month. “None of the major films at the top of the best picture conversation are helmed by women,” Alexander wrote, “and I'm curious if someone unexpected might emerge as the race starts clarifying in the coming months, even as a lone director pick.”
He’s right. Of the top contenders directed by women, the vast majority of them— Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch, Coralie Forgeat’s The Substance, Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun, Halina Reijn’s Babygirl — are being discussed primarily for their lead actress performances, and much less for the directors themselves.
There’s an excellent case to be made that these standout performances can rarely exist without the directors who shaped them, but there’s also a long Oscar history of separating the two. Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter), Annette Bening (Nyad), Cynthia Erivo (Harriet) and Saoirse Ronan (Little Women) are just some recent examples of actresses nominated for roles in films for which their female directors were not given the same recognition.
Though there’s no obvious film directed by a woman to break out of this pack, the best director category does feel very fluid right now, with Anora’s Sean Baker leading the pack and everyone else jockeying behind him. On Gold Derby’s aggregated prediction odds, Heller is the highest-ranked female director — in . . . 12th (!) place.
That means that Alexander may be right to hope that something unexpected could emerge — but it will be a true surprise, because right now I have no idea who it might be.
New York State of Mind
If you’re in the New York City area and sensing a distinct feeling of FOMO in the air — and aren’t too distracted by a certain mayoral scandal to notice — then you’re not alone. The arrival of the New York Film Festival, which kicked off Friday with opening night film Nickel Boys, the historical drama about an abusive Florida reform school based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, marks another stage of the fall festival season, and a great reason for New Yorkers to play hooky from work and catch a great film. (I won’t tell anyone if you don’t, Sean McNulty).
After the mad rush of Venice, Telluride and Toronto, where by my count more than a dozen major contenders had their world premieres, the New York Film Festival brings a calmer, more refined pace. In Toronto, filmgoers might face four hugely anticipated movies playing opposite each other. By contrast, New York offers a wonderful lack of decision fatigue. As one strategist who’s represented many films at the festival told me, “NYFF rewards longer films. It’s not a market the way Toronto and Venice are. I know people will see three or four movies a day, but it’s not the same frantic cramming. You have more attention for longer movies.”
That’s good news for the three-and-a-half-hour The Brutalist, which debuted at NYFF over the weekend — just like in Toronto, the lines were massive — as well as Luca Guadagnino’s two-hour-plus Queer, which met a somewhat befuddled response in Toronto following its Venice premiere and will play as a spotlight gala in New York this Friday. Neither film is even close to the longest in the festival; last week brought the press screening for Julia Loktev’s documentary about journalists in Russia, My Undesirable Friends, which is told in five chapters and runs nearly five and a half hours. (I hear it’s extraordinary, by the way.)
Challenging, auteur-driven projects often find a warm response at NYFF regardless of how they played elsewhere — my friend Chris Rosen of Gold Derby points to last year’s Maestro, which was received tepidly at its Venice premiere but bounced back significantly playing on Leonard Bernstein’s home turf at Lincoln Center. Friday night’s opening film Nickel Boys, which debuted at Telluride to some warm responses and some more baffled ones, seems to be experiencing a similar boomerang effect.
With FYC events still relatively sparse at this stage of the game, NYFF premieres are often the first chance many Oscar voters — industry professionals who actually have to work instead of jet off to Telluride — have to see the films they keep hearing about. As the strategist told me, “People are coming to you asking, ‘What are you repping? I want to go see things at the festival.’”
Some of it is truly just about the venue — Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, jutting out over Broadway, is a glorious place to see a movie, and stepping into a theater just a few hundred yards away from the Metropolitan Opera or David Geffen Hall really does make films feel like high art. “It feels like you’re going to see these movies because you’re someone who loves going to the movies,” the strategist tells me. “You’re still getting the same people, but it doesn’t feel like an FYC play.”
Buzz Builders
Though press screenings have been going on for a few weeks now — I’ve been gratified to see my fellow journalists fall as hard for Hard Truths as I did in Toronto — most public screenings are still rolling out. It seems safe to predict another wave of acclaim for Cannes premieres making their way through Oscar season like Anora, Emilia Perez, or Germany’s international feature submission The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
I’m also eager to see what happens for A Real Pain, a big priority for Searchlight that premiered at Sundance and played at Telluride but for some reason sat out Toronto, where I am certain it would have gone over well. New Yorker Jesse Eisenberg writes, directs and stars opposite Kieran Culkin as a pair of American cousins visiting Holocaust landmarks in Poland; it’s certain to hit its target at NYFF ahead of its Nov. 1 release.
The most fascinating premiere, however, will arrive on Oct. 10, when Steve McQueen’s Blitz makes its North American debut after premiering at the London Film Festival a few days earlier. It doesn’t tend to matter that much if something is a world premiere at NYFF — the festival slate is so selective that everything feels like a big deal — but there’s a lot of curiosity around the World War II drama Blitz, one of the few remaining awards hopefuls that has yet to be screened widely.
By then, the rest of the fall festival season will be well underway, taking place in such posh small areas and cities such as the Hamptons, Mill Valley, Middleburg, Newport Beach, Savannah and Montclair, N.J. — where you can see me! The audiences at those festivals are a little different than the NYFF crowd, albeit with some significant overlap. We’ll be talking about them soon enough. In the meantime, if you’re lucky enough to be at Lincoln Center this week, say hi to all the cinephiles for me.
For my movie going money last year, the two most incredibly talented female directors to be egregiously overlooked were Eva Longoria (Flamin’ Hot) and Kelly Fremon Craig (Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.). I can’t wait to see what’s coming next from those two ladies! They have such a clear, impressive eye on exactly what film they are making.
These are incredible films by talented directors. I hope the voters will give them the recognition they deserve.