Another year of movies means another set of Oscar records set and broken. Prepare for the 95th Academy Awards with this brand new trivia roundup for this year's nominees!
BEST PICTURE
The Fabelmans marks Steven Spielberg’s 12th nomination as a producer in this category, more than anyone in Academy history. It is also the 13th film directed by Spielberg nominated for Best Picture, tying him with William Wyler for the all-time record. But a Spielberg-directed or -produced film has only won Best Picture once before—1993’s Schindler’s List.
The Banshees of Inisherin marks Martin McDonagh’s second nomination as a producer in this category (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, 2017). No Irish producer has ever won Best Picture.
Tár marks Cate Blanchett’s tenth appearance in a film nominated for Best Picture, tying her with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson for second-most Best Picture appearances of any actor, behind only Robert De Niro (11).
Tár’s Todd Field and Elvis’s Baz Luhrmann each earned their second Best Picture nominations this year. Field and Luhrmann have only ever been nominated in this category opposite each other: both received their first nominations in 2001 for In the Bedroom and Moulin Rouge!, respectively.
Including Elvis producers Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, there have been 17 Australian producers nominated for Best Picture. Three have won before: Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey (Braveheart, 1995) and Emile Sherman (The King’s Speech, 2010).
Martin is a nine-time nominee and four-time winner across three categories— including two wins each for costume design and production design/art direction—making her the most-awarded Australian in Oscar history. She would extend that record with a win for any of her three nominations this year. All of Martin's nominations have come for her work on films directed by her husband, Baz Luhrmann.
Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water are the 8th and 9th sequels nominated for Best Picture. Only two have won before: The Godfather Part II (1974) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). This is the first time two sequels are nominated for Best Picture in the same year.
Avatar joins The Godfather and The Lord of the Rings trilogies, Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s, and The Hustler and The Color of Money as the only film series where every installment was nominated for Best Picture.
Top Gun: Maverick joins Mad Max: Fury Road and Toy Story 3 as the only sequels nominated for Best Picture without any of their predecessors being nominated.
Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water also mark the first year that the top two films at the domestic box office are both nominated for Best Picture since 1982 (E.T. and Tootsie).
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s films have amassed a total of 41 Oscar nominations and 6 wins, but Top Gun: Maverick’s Best Picture citation is his first individual nomination. Three-time acting nominee Tom Cruise and Oscar-winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie also earned their first career Best Picture nominations for Top Gun: Maverick.
Skydance Films founder David Ellison also earned his first Best Picture nomination for Top Gun: Maverick. He is the brother of Annapurna Pictures founder and four-time Best Picture nominee Megan Ellison.
Avatar: The Way of Water is James Cameron’s third consecutive feature film nominated for Best Picture, after Avatar (2009) and Titanic (1997).
Avatar: The Way of Water is the 32nd film nominated for Best Picture without any directing, acting, or writing nominations. Of those, the only one to win Best Picture was Wings (1927).
The entire credited producing teams for both Avatar: The Way of Water and Women Talking are previous winners in this category. The only other previous Best Picture winner nominated this year is (you guessed it) Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans.
Women Talking is the 19th film directed by a woman nominated for Best Picture. It would be the third to win, after The Hurt Locker (2009) and Nomadland (2020).
Everything Everywhere All at Once is the 6th Best Picture nominee directed by a directing duo, and would be the 3rd to win, after West Side Story (1961) and No Country for Old Men (2007). It is also the 5th Best Picture nominee distributed by A24, and would be the second to win, after 2016’s Moonlight.
Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang are the 11th and 12th East or South Asian nominees for Best Picture. Only three have won before: Kwak Sin-ae and Bong Joon-ho for Parasite (2019) and Chloé Zhao for Nomadland (2020).
This is the fourth consecutive year with a Best Picture nominee with an all- or majority-Asian cast: Parasite (2019), Minari (2020), Drive My Car (2021), and this year’s Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Fifteen women have previously won the Academy Award for Best Picture as producers. Four of this year’s nominees have female producers: Elvis (Catherine Martin and Gail Berman), The Fabelmans (Kristie Macosko Krieger), Tar (Alexandra Milchan), Women Talking (Dede Gardner and Frances McDormand).
All Quiet on the Western Front is the 7th Netflix film nominated for Best Picture. Only one streaming release has ever won Best Picture—last year’s CODA, distributed by AppleTV+.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the second German film nominated for Best Picture, after Amour (2012), which was a French-Austrian-German co-production. Malte Grunert is the 7th German producer nominated for Best Picture, and would be the second to win after Henry Blanke (The Life of Emile Zola, 1937).
All Quiet on the Western Front is the ninth remake of a Best Picture nominee and third remake of a Best Picture winner nominated for Best Picture, after 1962’s Mutiny on the Bounty and last year’s West Side Story. It would be the third remake ever to win the Academy’s top prize, after The Departed (2006) a remake of the Hong Kong crime drama Internal Affairs.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the 14th Best Picture nominee to have mostly non-English dialogue, and the first predominantly in German. This is the fifth consecutive year with a non-English-language film nominated for Best Picture: Roma (2018), Parasite (2019), Minari (2020), Drive My Car (2021), and All Quiet on the Western Front (2022).
Avatar: The Way of Water and Everything Everywhere All At Once are the 13th and 14th sci-fi films nominated for Best Picture. No sci-fi movie has ever taken the Academy’s top prize before.
If All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, Elvis, Top Gun: Maverick, or Women Talking win Best Picture, it will be only the seventh time a film wins Best Picture without a corresponding Best Director nomination—and the second in a row, after last year’s CODA.
DIRECTING
With his 9th nomination for The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg ties Martin Scorsese as the second-most nominated director in Academy history, behind only 12-time nominee (and three-time winner) William Wyler.
Spielberg has won this category twice before, for Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). If he wins again, Spielberg will be only the fourth filmmaker in history to win Best Director three or more times at the Oscars, joining Wyler, Frank Capra, and four-time winner John Ford.
At age 76, Spielberg is the eighth-oldest person to ever receive a Best Director nomination. If he wins, he’ll be the oldest winner in the category’s history, surpassing Clint Eastwood, who was 74 when he won for Million Dollar Baby (2004).
Spielberg is not only the only previous winner in this year's directing lineup, but also the only repeat nominee. All the other nominees are first-timers in this category—but Todd Field and Martin McDonagh have previously been nominated in other categories, and Ruben Östlund has directed a Best International Film nominee (The Square, 2017).
Ruben Östlund is the 4th Swedish filmmaker nominated for Best Director, joining Jan Troell (1972’s The Emigrants), three-time nominee Ingmar Bergman (1973’s Cries and Whispers, 1976’s Face to Face, and 1983’s Fanny and Alexander), and two-time nominee Lasse Hallström (1987’s My Life as a Dog, 1999’s The Cider House Rules). He would be the first to win in this category.
Martin McDonagh is the 6th Irish filmmaker nominated for Best Director, joining Herbert Brenon (Sorrell and Son, 1928), Kenneth Branagh (Henry V, 1989 and Belfast, 2021), Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, 1989 and In the Name of the Father, 1993), Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, 1992), and Lenny Abrahamson (Room, 2015). He would be the first to win in this category.
McDonagh is the second Best Live Action Short winner to go on to a Best Director nomination, after Taylor Hackford (Teenage Father, 1979; Ray, 2004).
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are the 4th filmmaking team jointly nominated for Best Director, after Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, 2007 and True Grit, 2010), Warren Beatty and Buck Henry (Heaven Can Wait, 1978), and Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (West Side Story, 1961). They would be the 3rd to win, after the Coen Brothers and Wise/Robbins.
If they win, Kwan and Scheinert (both age 35) will be among the ten youngest Best Director winners in history.
Daniel Kwan is the fifth Asian or Asian-American filmmaker nominated for directing in the last four years, and the 9th overall. If he wins, he would be the fourth Asian or Asian-American filmmaker to take home this award, after Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, 2005 and Life of Pi, 2012), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, 2019), and Chloe Zhao (Nomadland, 2020), and the first Asian filmmaker born in the United States to achieve this feat. Kwan, Lee, and Chao are the only directors from China or of Chinese descent ever nominated for Best Director.
Field has received at least one Oscar nomination for every film he has directed: Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for In the Bedroom (2001), Best Adapted Screenplay for Little Children (2006), and Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay for Tár. However, none of his films have won an Oscar.
All of the directing nominees are also nominated this year in Best Original Screenplay for their work on these five films. This is the first time both categories have ever matched up 5/5.
After two consecutive years of women winning in this category, no female filmmaker was nominated for directing this year. Only three women have ever won the Oscar for Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, 2009), Chloe Zhao (Nomadland, 2020), and Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog, 2021).
ACTING CATEGORIES
Five acting nominees this year (Colin Farrell, Paul Mescal, Kerry Condon, Brendan Gleeson, and Barry Keoghan) are from Ireland—that’s 25% of all the acting nominees, and more than any other single year. Including those five, there have been 22 Irish acting nominees in Academy history. Three Irish actors have won Oscars for acting a total of five times: Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot, 1989), Barry Fitzgerald (Going My Way, 1939), and three-time winner Daniel Day-Lewis (My Left Foot, 1989, There Will Be Blood, 2007, and Lincoln, 2012).
Four acting nominees this year (Michelle Yeoh, Hong Chau, Stephanie Hsu, and Ke Huy Quan) are Asian or Asian-American—that’s 20% of all the acting nominees, more than any other single year. Including those four, there have been 22 acting nominees of East or South Asian descent in Academy history, with five previous winners: Yul Brynner (The King and I, 1956), Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, 1982), Haing S. Ngor (The Killing Fields, 1984), Miyoshi Umeki (Sayonara, 1957), and Youn Yuh-jung (Minari, 2020).
Sixteen of this year’s twenty acting nominees are receiving their first career nominations, the most first-time acting nominees in one year since 1936: the first year that the supporting categories were introduced, and the first year that acting categories were set at five nominees each.
The only previous nominees recognized again this year are Cate Blanchett, Michelle Williams, Angela Bassett, and Judd Hirsch. Of those, Blanchett is the only previous winner.
Best Actor
All five nominees for Best Actor received their first career nominations this year. That hasn’t happened since the 7th Academy Awards 88 years ago, recognizing the films of 1934.
Colin Farrell and Paul Mescal are the 10th and 11th Irish performers nominated for Best Actor. If either one wins, it would be the fourth time an Irish actor won this category, but he'd be only the second Irish actor to win: the other three times were all Daniel Day-Lewis.
At age 26, Paul Mescal just misses the list of top ten youngest Best Actor nominees, but he would be the youngest Best Actor winner of all time, beating current record holder Adrien Brody (who was 29 when he won for The Pianist in 2002) by more than three years.
At age 31, Austin Butler would be the 5th youngest winner in this category’s history, behind Adrien Brody (The Pianist, 2002, age 29), Richard Dreyfuss (The Goodbye Girl, 1977, age 30), Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront, 1954, age 30), and Maximilian Schell (Judgment at Nuremburg, 1961, age 31).
At age 73, Bill Nighy is the 7th oldest nominee in this category’s history. If he wins, he’d be the third-oldest winner in this category’s history behind Henry Fonda (On Golden Pond, 1981, age 76) and Anthony Hopkins (The Father, 2020, age 83).
Nighy is the 15th cast member of the Harry Potter film series to receive an Oscar nomination.
Brendan Fraser is the 6th Canadian nominated for Best Actor, and would be the first to win in this category. He would be the 7th Canadian performer to win an Oscar in any acting category.
Fraser, Nighy, or Mescal would be the first Best Actor winner whose film was not nominated for Best Picture since Jeff Bridges in 2009’s Crazy Heart.
Best Actress
With her eighth nomination for Tár, Cate Blanchett joins Marlon Brando, Glenn Close, Judi Dench, Jack Lemmon, and Geraldine Page in a tie for the fifth-most nominations of any actor in Academy history.
Two-time winner Blanchett (The Aviator, 2004 and Blue Jasmine, 2013) is already the only Australian performer to have won multiple acting Oscars. If she wins this year, she’d be only the eighth person in history to win three or more acting Oscars, alongside Walter Brennan, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Meryl Streep, and Frances McDormand.
Including Blanchett, seven Australian women have been nominated for Best Actress, with two winners among them: Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, 2013) and Nicole Kidman (The Hours, 2002).
Blanchett is the second-most-nominated Australian of all time, after Catherine Martin (10), a three-time nominee this year.
Blanchett is the only person to ever win an Oscar for playing a real life Oscar winner (Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (2004)).* If she wins for Tár, she’ll also be the only person to win an Oscar for playing a fictional Oscar winner.**
* Renée Zellweger won Best Actress for portraying Judy Garland in Judy (2019), who received an Academy Juvenile Award in 1939, but never won a competitive Oscar.
** Maggie Smith is the only actor to have won an Oscar for playing a fictional Oscar nominee (California Suite, 1978).
Every film directed by Todd Field has received a nomination in this category: In the Bedroom (Sissy Spacek, 2001), Little Children (Kate Winslet, 2006), and Tár (Blanchett, 2022).
Ana de Armas is the first Cuban actress nominated in this category, and the third Cuban or Cuban-American performer ever nominated for an acting Oscar, after Andy Garcia (The Godfather Part III, 1991) and Mercedes Ruehl (The Fisher King, 1991). She would be the second to win, after Ruehl.
De Armas is the fifth Latina Best Actress nominee, after Brazil’s Fernanda Montenegro (Central Station, 1998), Mexico’s Salma Hayek (Frida, 2002) and Yalitza Aparicio (Roma, 2018), and Colombia’s Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace, 2004). She would be the first to win this category.
Michelle Yeoh is the first Malaysian performer nominated for an Oscar, the first Chinese Best Actress nominee, and the second Asian actress nominated for this award, after Merle Oberon* (The Dark Angel, 1935). She would be the first to win in this category.
* Oberon was of partial Sri Lankan and Māori descent, but concealed her true heritage and passed as white during her Hollywood career. Yeoh is the first person who publicly identifies and is recognized as Asian to be nominated for Best Actress.
Yeoh is the second Malaysian nominee in any category, after Oscar-winning documentarian Joanna Natasegara (The White Helmets, 2016).
If Yeoh or de Armas win, they would be only the second actress of color in Academy history to do so, joining Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball, 2001).
Marilyn Monroe is the 22nd role to have earned multiple actors Oscar nominations: In addition to de Armas, fellow nominee Michelle Williams was previously nominated for playing Monroe in My Week with Marilyn (2011). Monroe herself, of course, never received an Oscar nomination during her lifetime.
This is the fifth nomination for Michelle Williams, and her third for Best Actress. Although Steven Spielberg has directed 17 Oscar nominated performances (including Williams and supporting actor nominee Judd Hirsch), Williams is only the second woman nominated for Best Actress for a performance in a Steven Spielberg film, after Whoopi Goldberg (The Color Purple, 1985).
All five Best Actress nominees originate from a different country: Blanchett (Australia), de Armas (Cuba), Williams (USA), Yeoh (Malaysia), and Andrea Riseborough (UK). That hasn’t happened since 2007’s Best Actress lineup, which included Marion Cotillard (France), Julie Christie (UK), Laura Linney (USA), Elliot Page (Canada), and Blanchett again.
Best Supporting Actress
Angela Bassett received her second nomination after a 29-year gap from her first (What’s Love Got To Do With It?, 1993). Bassett is the 27th Black nominee in this category, and would be the 10th to win. She is the 11th Black performer and 4th Black actress to receive multiple acting nominations, after Oscar winners Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Whoopi Goldberg.
Bassett is the first person ever nominated for a performance in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, and the third actor nominated for a role in a superhero film after Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight, 2008) and Joaquin Phoenix (Joker, 2019), both of whom won for those roles.
Kerry Condon is the 7th Irish nominee in this category, and would be the 2nd to win, after Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot, 1989).
Hong Chau and Stephanie Hsu are the 7th and 8th East Asian nominees in this category’s history. Either would become the third Asian winner in this category’s history, after Miyoshi Ukeda in Sayonara (1957) and Youn Yuh-jung in Minari (2020). This is the first time ever that two Asian actresses are nominated in this category in the same year.
Chau is the first Vietnamese actor nominated for an Oscar in this category. She and fellow nominee Ke Huy Quan are the only Vietnamese actors ever nominated, and either would be the first to win.
Stephanie Hsu is the 5th performer of Chinese descent ever nominated for an Oscar and the third in this category, after sisters Meg (Agnes of God, 1985) and Jennifer Tilly (Bullets Over Broadway, 1994). Should any of them prevail, Hsu or her Everything Everywhere All At Once castmates Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan would be the first Chinese actors to win an Oscar.
Jamie Lee Curtis is the second person to receive an acting nomination whose parents were both also nominated for acting. Curtis’s parents Tony Curtis (The Defiant Ones, 1958) and Janet Leigh (Psycho, 1960) are both Oscar nominees. The only other is Oscar winner and four-time nominee Laura Dern (Marriage Story, 2019, and three other nominations) and her parents, Bruce Dern (Nebraska, 2014) and three-time nominee Diane Ladd.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is the 36th film to receive multiple nominations in the Best Supporting Actress category. On twelve previous occasions, an actress won this category when nominated against a costar.
This is the 4th time this category has been made up of a majority of nominees of color (1985, 2006, 2016).
Best Supporting Actor
Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan are the 5th and 6th Irish nominees in this category, after Barry Fitzgerald (Going My Way, 1944), Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn, 2011), Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave, 2013), and Ciarán Hinds (Belfast, 2021). Either would become the second Irish winner, after Fitzgerald.
Gleeson is the 16th Harry Potter cast member to be nominated for an acting Oscar.
At age 30, Keoghan would be the 5th youngest winner in this category’s history, after Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People, age 20), Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire, 29), George Chakiris (West Side Story, 29), and Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight, 29).
The Banshees of Inisherin is the 22nd film to receive multiple nominations in this category. There have been double-nominees from one film in this category for five of the last six years, including the last four. On seven previous occasions, an actor won in this category when nominated against one or more costars.
This is the second time that a film directed by Martin McDonagh receives multiple Best Supporting Actor nominations—the first was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), which received nominations for both Woody Harrelson and eventual winner Sam Rockwell.
Judd Hirsch’s second nomination in this category for The Fabelmans comes 42 years after his first for Ordinary People in 1980. It’s the longest gap between nominations for any actor in Academy history.
At age 87, Hirsch is the second oldest nominee in this category after Christopher Plummer for All the Money in the World (2017, age 88). He would be the oldest winner ever in any acting category, but would fall just short of the oldest winner of all time: screenwriter James Ivory, who was 89 when he won for Call Me By Your Name (2017).
Ke Huy Quan is the first Vietnamese and first Chinese nominee in this category’s history, and would therefore also be the first to win. He is the 9th East or South Asian nominee in this category, and would be the second to win, after Haing S. Ngor (The Killing Fields, 1984).
Brian Tyree Henry is the 59th Black actor ever nominated for an Oscar and the 19th in this category. He would be the 7th Black performer to win Best Supporting Actor.
Henry is the first Best Supporting Actor nominee to be the only representative of his film at the Oscars since Willem Dafoe for The Florida Project (2017).
WRITING
Original Screenplay
Todd Field has been nominated for screenwriting for every film he’s ever written: In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2005), and Tár (2022). He has yet to win.
Steven Spielberg has directed 34 feature films, and has been credited as a writer on only three of them: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001), and The Fabelmans (2022). This is the first screenwriting nomination of his career.
The Fabelmans marks playwright Tony Kushner’s third screenwriting Oscar nomination, all for collaborations with Steven Spielberg. If he wins, he’ll be the 16th person to have won both an Academy Award and a Pulitzer Prize.
If Kushner wins the Oscar this year, he’ll be only a Grammy away from completing the EGOT, having previously won Tony and Emmy Awards for Angels in America.
Östlund is the 8th Swedish writer nominated for screenwriting, and the second in the Original Screenplay category, after five-time writing nominee Ingmar Bergman. He would be the first Swedish screenwriting winner.
This is McDonagh’s third screenwriting nomination. He’s one of 11 Irish writing nominees in Oscar history, and would be the fourth to win, after George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion, 1938), Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, 1992), and Kenneth Branagh (Belfast, 2021).
Daniel Kwan is the 9th South or East Asian nominee for Best Original Screenplay, and one of 15 such nominees across both screenwriting categories. He would be the third Asian nominee to win a screenwriting Oscar, after Han Jin-won and Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, 2019).
Adapted Screenplay
Sarah Polley or Lesley Paterson would become the 8th woman to win Best Adapted Screenplay, and the 21st female winner in either writing category.
If Polley wins, she will be the third consecutive solo female screenwriter to win a writing Oscar, following original screenplay winners Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, 2020) and Sian Heder (CODA, 2021).
Polley would also be only the second Canadian to win Best Adapted Screenplay after John Irving (The Cider House Rules, 1999) and the fourth Canadian screenwriter to win across both writing categories (Roger Avery, Pulp Fiction, 1994; Paul Haggis, Crash, 2005).
In addition to being a part of the nominated screenwriting team for All Quiet on the Western Front, Lesley Paterson is also an elite triathlete, having won three gold medals at the XTERRA Triathlon World Championships.
All Quiet on the Western Front’s Edward Berger is the 9th German screenwriter nominated for an Oscar, and would be the third winner, after Hanns Kräly (The Patriot, 1928/29) and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (A Room with a View, 1986; Howards End, 1992).
88 films in languages other than English have been nominated for screenwriting Oscars, including this year’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the 22nd non-English-language film nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the third primarily in German. No German-language film has ever won a screenwriting Oscar, and no non-English-language film has ever won in this category—although six foreign language films have won in Best Original Screenplay.
This is the fifth year in a row that at least one non-English-language screenplay is nominated for a screenwriting Oscar: Roma (2018), Parasite (2019), Minari (2020), both Drive My Car and The Worst Person in the World (2021), and All Quiet on the Western Front (2022).
Kazuo Ishiguro is the 6th East or South Asian nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay, and one of 15 such nominees across both writing categories. Like Kwan, he would be the third East or South Asian screenwriter to win an Oscar.
Ishiguro is the fourth Japanese nominee for screenwriting, after Iris Yamashita (Letters from Iwo Jima, 2006) and Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe (Drive My Car, 2021). He would be the first to win.
Ishiguro, a previous winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is the fourth Nobel Laureate to be nominated for an Oscar, after Harold Pinter, George Bernard Shaw, and Bob Dylan, and would be the third to win both prizes (Shaw, Dylan).
The only previous winner across both writing categories is Top Gun: Maverick’s Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, 1995).
VISUALS
Cinematography
All Quiet on the Western Front and Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths are the 24th and 25th non-English language films nominated for Best Cinematography. Either would become the sixth non-English language winner in this category.
Bardo is the third Mexican film nominated here, and would be the third to win, after Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and Roma (2018).
Darius Khondji is the only Iranian cinematographer ever nominated in this category. If he wins, Bardo will be the third consecutive film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu to win an Oscar in this category, after Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015), which were both shot by Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the fourth German film nominated here, after Das Boot (1982), The White Ribbon (2009), and Never Look Away (2018). It would be the first to win.
Florian Hoffmeister is the seventh German cinematographer nominated in this category, and would be the fourth to win, after Karl Freund (The Good Earth, 1937), Eugen Schüfftan (The Hustler, 1961), and Walter Lassally (Zorba the Greek, 1964)
This is the fourth time that multiple non-English-language films are nominated for Best Cinematography (2000, 2004, 2018).
Mandy Walker is the third woman ever nominated for Best Cinematography, after Rachel Morrison (Mudbound, 2017) and Ari Wegner (The Power of the Dog, 2021). Walker would be the first to win.
Walker is also the 10th Australian director of photography nominated in this category, and would be the 8th to win.
With his 16th nomination, Roger Deakins is the second-most-nominated person in the history of this category, after 18-time nominees Charles Lang and Leon Shamroy. If he wins, he’ll be the 11th person to win three or more Cinematography Oscars.
Film Editing
Mikkel E.G. Nielsen is the only Danish nominee in this category’s history. He won on his only previous nomination for Sound of Metal (2020). Nielsen is also the only returning nominee in this lineup—all the others are first-time nominees.
Matt Villa is the 12th Australian nominee in this category. He would be the fourth Australian winner, after Kirk Baxter (The Social Network, 2010; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2011); Margaret Sixel (Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015), and Lee Smith (Dunkirk, 2017).
Top Gun: Maverick and its predecessor, Top Gun, both received nominations in this category. The only other film series to receive multiple nominations in this category are Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s (1944 and 1945); Star Wars (A New Hope, 1977; The Force Awakens, 2015), The Godfather (Parts I and III in 1972 and 1991), and all three Lord of the Rings films (2001, 2002, 2003).
Monika Willi is the 47th woman nominated in this category, and would be the 14th woman to win the Oscar for Film Editing. She is the third Austrian nominated for film editing, and would be the second to win, after Peter Zinner (The Deer Hunter, 1978).
Visual Effects
If Avatar: The Way of Water wins here, Avatar will become the 6th film series to have won multiple visual effects Oscars, joining Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003), Star Wars (1977, 1980, 1983), Indiana Jones (1981, 1984), Alien (1979, 1986), and King Kong (1976, 2005).
Avatar: The Way of Water is the 7th film directed by James Cameron to be nominated for Best Visual Effects, and would be the 6th to win. True Lies (1994) is the only Cameron-directed film to be nominated for this award that didn’t win.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the 13th MCU film nominated for Best Visual Effects. It would be the first to win.
The Batman is the third Batman film nominated for this award, after Batman Returns (1992) and The Dark Knight (2008). It would be the first to win. The Batman franchise is in a nine-way tie for 5th most nominations in this category, behind the MCU (13), Star Wars (10), Middle Earth (5), and Alien (4) series.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the second non-English-language film nominated for Best Visual Effects, after When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1971).
If Avatar wins, Joe Letteri’s fifth Oscar will move him into a tie with Gordon Jennings and Ken Ralston for the second-most wins in this category, behind only Dennis Muren (8).
DESIGNS
Costume Design
With her fourth nomination for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ruth Carter again ties Viola Davis as the most-nominated Black woman in Academy history across all categories. If she wins, she’ll be the first Black woman and fourth Black person to have won multiple Oscars, after actors Denzel Washington and Mahershala Ali and sound designer Russell Williams II.
Carter is one of only three Black designers ever nominated in this category, and is the only Black winner in this category’s history (Black Panther, 2018).If Carter wins again this year, Black Panther will become the first film series to have won multiple Oscars in this category.
Catherine Martin already has the most Oscar wins (4) of any Australian in Academy history. If she wins in any of the three categories she’s nominated in this year, she’ll extend that record.
Martin has previously won this category twice: Moulin Rouge! (2001) and The Great Gatsby (2013). On both occasions, she also won the Oscar for Production Design. She is nominated again in both categories for Elvis.
Shirley Kurata is the 11th East or South Asian and 7th Japanese nominee in this category. She would be the fourth Japanese and fifth Asian winner in this category’s history, after Sanzo Wada (Gate of Hell, 1954), Emi Wada (Ran, 1985), Eiko Ishioka (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, 1992), and Indian winner Bhanu Athaiya (Gandhi, 1982).
With her 13th nomination, Jenny Beavan is the sixth-most nominated costume designer in Academy history, after Edith Head (35), Charles LeMaire (16), Sandy Powell and Irene Sharaff (15), and Jean Louis (14).
If Beavan wins her fourth Oscar for Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, she will be tied with Colleen Atwood and Milena Canonero for third-most wins of all time, behind Edith Head (8) and Irene Sharaff (5).
This is the 13th time that all five costume design nominees are women.
Production Design
All Quiet on the Western Front is the 23rd non-English-language film nominated in this category, and the first German film to do so. It would be the fourth non-English film to win, after Fanny and Alexander (1983), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).
Avatar is the 10th series to receive multiple nominations in this category, after the Harry Potter franchise (5 nominations), the Middle Earth films (4 nominations, 1 win), the Star Wars series (3 nominations, 1 win) the Batman franchise and the Godfather trilogy (2 nominations, 1 win each), and the Alien series as well as Blade Runner, Mary Poppins, and 2001: A Space Odyssey and their sequels (2 nominations each).
If Avatar: The Way of Water wins, Avatar will be the first film series to have won this category more than once.
Catherine Martin has won this category twice before (Moulin Rouge!, 2001 and The Great Gatsby, 2013). On both occasions, she also won for Costume Design for the same film. She could repeat that feat a third time with Elvis.
This is the third year in a row that each nominated production design team includes at least one woman—and the sixth time overall that has happened.
If Catherine Martin, Karen Murphy, and Bev Dunn win for Elvis, it will be the 5th time that this award has gone to an all-female team (or to a solo woman nominee)—and would be Martin’s third and Dunn’s second wins as part of an all-female Production Design team.
Makeup and Hairstyling
Naomi Donne and Mike Marino (The Batman) were both nominated in this category last year: Donne for Cruella and Marino for Coming 2 America. There has never been a back-to-back winner in this category, and since neither won last year, that record will stand.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the 13th non-English-language film nominated in this category, and would be fourth to win, after Quest for Fire (1982), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and La Vie en Rose (2007).
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is only the second MCU movie nominated in this category, after Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). It would be the first to win.
Camille Friend is only the fifth Black person nominated in this category. She would be the third Black winner here, after Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 2020).
The Batman is the 3rd Batman film nominated in this category, after Batman Returns (1991) and The Dark Knight (2008). It would be the first to win.
For the last six years, a film has won this category for makeup effects that transform movie stars into other well-known real life figures: Darkest Hour (2017), Vice (2018), Bombshell (2019), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020), and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, (2021). Elvis can extend that streak this year.
Aldo Signoretti is one of nine Italian nominees in this category’s history. He would be the fourth to win, after Manlio Rocchetti (Driving Miss Daisy, 1989) and Alessandro Bertolazzi and Giorgio Gregorini (Suicide Squad, 2016).
SOUND
Original Score
John Williams received his 53rd career nomination across both music categories for The Fabelmans, extending his record as the most Oscar-nominated living person. He is the second most nominated person in Academy history, behind only Walt Disney (59).
Williams has won 5 Oscars for Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Schindler’s List (1993). A sixth win for The Fabelmans would be his first in nearly 30 years. He would remain the second-most awarded composer in Academy history, behind nine-time winner Alfred Newman.
At age 90, Williams is the oldest person ever nominated for a competitive Oscar, and would therefore also be the oldest winner.
Volker Bertelmann (also sometimes credited as Hauschka) received his first solo nomination for All Quiet on the Western Front, after being previously nominated alongside Dustin O’Halleran for Lion (2016).
Bertelmann is one of 17 German nominees for Best Score. German composers have won this category 15 times, including Hans Zimmer’s second win for Dune just last year.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the 19th mostly or entirely non-English-language film nominated for Best Original Score. It would be the sixth to win, after Il Postino (1995), Life is Beautiful (1998), The Red Violin (1999), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Babel (2006).
Bertelmann and Hurwitz have only ever been nominated in the same year; both were previously nominated in 2016, when Hurwitz won for La La Land.
Ian Chang and Fariq Bhatia, members of nominated group Son Lux, are the 7th and 8th East or South Asian musicians nominated in this category. They would be the 5th and 6th winners, after Cong Su and Ryuichi Sakamoto (The Last Emperor, 1987), Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000), and A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire, 2008).
Ryan Lott, the third member of Son Lux, is also nominated for Best Original Song this year, alongside Mitski and previous Best Score winner David Byrne.
Original Song
Diane Warren is the most nominated songwriter in this category’s history without a competitive win. Including her nomination this year for “Applause” from Tell it Like a Woman, Warren’s songs have been the sole nominee for their films eight of the 14 times she was nominated.
Warren received an honorary Academy Award earlier this year. She is the 23rd person to receive a competitive nomination after receiving an honorary Oscar (excluding those who received a competitive and honorary award for the same film), a list that includes Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Charles Boyer, Laurence Olivier, Fred Astaire, Alec Guinness, Henry Fonda, Paul Newman, Peter O’Toole, Ennio Morricone, Spike Lee, and Agnès Varda. Of those, Disney, Fonda, Newman, Morricone, and Lee all won competitive awards after being fêted with an Honorary Oscar.
Warren and Lady Gaga were previously nominated together for the song “Til it Happens to You” from the documentary The Hunting Ground in 2015.
Top Gun and Black Panther are the 10th and 11th film series or franchise to receive Best Song nominations for multiple films. If “Hold My Hand” wins this year, Top Gun will become the 3rd series with multiple wins in this category, joining only the James Bond franchise and the A Star is Born films.
The nominees in this category have earned a combined 107 Grammy nominations, with 28 total wins. Most of that haul comes from Lady Gaga (36 noms, 13 wins) and Rihanna (33 noms, 9 wins), but Diane Warren (15 nominations, 1 win), Ludwig Göransson (9 nominations, 3 wins), David Byrne (6 nominations, 2 wins), Tems (5 nominations), and Bloodpop (3 nominations) have also been recognized by the Recording Academy
Göransson, Bloodpop, and Tems were also nominated for this year’s Grammy for Album of the Year. Göransson is a producer on Adele’s 30, and Bloodpop and Tems are credited as producer and featured artist, respectively, on Beyoncé’s Renaissance.
If “Lift Me Up” or “This is a Life” win, Ludwig Göransson or David Byrne, respectively, would become the 21st person in Academy history to win Oscars for both Original Score and Song. If “This is a Life” and Everything Everywhere All At Once sweep both the Song and Score categories, Ryan Lott would also accomplish this feat as part of Son Lux.
“Naatu Naatu” is the 13th song not in English to be nominated for this award. It would be the fourth to win, after the title song from Never on Sunday (1960), “Al otro lado del río” from The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), and “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire (2008).
M.M. Keeravani, Chandrabose, and Mitski are the 10th, 11th, and 12th Asian musicians nominated in this category. This is the second time three or more Asian musicians have been nominated in the same year, after 2008 when A.R. Rahman, Gulzar, and M.I.A. were all nominated for songs from Slumdog Millionaire.
Tems is the 1st Nigerian-born Academy Award nominee in any category, and the third African-born nominee in this category, after Jonas Gwangwa (Cry Freedom, 1987) and Herbert Kretzmer (Les Misérables, 2012), both from South Africa. She would be the first to win.
Including Tems, Rihanna, and Ryan Coogler this year, there have been 46 Black nominees in the Best Original Song category. There have been twelve Black winners in this category’s history; if “Lift Me Up” wins, that number would jump to 15.
Göransson is the fifth Swedish nominee for Best Original Song, and would be the first to win.
Best Sound
If Avatar: The Way of Water wins, Gary Summers and Christopher Boyes will move into a tie as the second-most-awarded sound professionals in Academy history with fellow five-time winners Thomas T. Moulton, Douglas Shearer, and Fred Hynes, behind only seven-time winner Gary Rydstrom.
Andy Nelson extends his record as the most-nominated sound professional in Academy history. His two nominations this year for Elvis and The Batman bring him up to 24 career nominations.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the 6th non-English-language film nominated in a sound category at the Oscars. It would be the second to win, after Letters from Iwo Jima (Sound Editing, 2006).
Gwendolyn Yates Whittle is the only woman nominated for Best Sound this year. She would be the seventh woman in Academy history to win a sound design Oscar.
Avatar and Top Gun are the 12th and 13th series to receive sound nominations for multiple films, after Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Transformers, Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Lethal Weapon, Star Trek, Batman, and the Indiana Jones and James Bond franchises.
The Batman is the fourth Batman film to receive a sound nomination, including previous winner The Dark Knight (2008). If it wins, it will be the fifth series to have multiple films with Oscar-winning sound, after Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and the James Bond and Indiana Jones franchises.
David Lee would become the first Australian with multiple Best Sound Oscars if Elvis wins.
INTERNATIONAL
All Quiet on the Western Front is Germany’s 21st nominee* in this category, and its 9th since 2000. Two German films have won this category before: Nowhere in Africa (2002) and The Lives of Others (2006).
*including nine nominated films from West Germany and one nominated film from East Germany, which submitted separately in this category prior to their reunification in 1990.
Close is the 8th nominee in this category from Belgium. No Belgian film has ever won this category before. Belgium is the second-most-nominated country to have never won this award, after Israel (10).
EO is the 13th International Feature nominee from Poland, and the third Polish nominee in the last five years. Only one Polish film has won this category before: 2014’s Ida.
Argentina, 1985 is the 8th nominee in this category from Argentina, and would be the third to win, after The Official Story (1985) and The Secret in Their Eyes (2009). It would be the fifth Latin American film to win this award—the other two previous Latin American winners are Chile's A Fantastic Woman (2017) and Mexico's Roma (2018).
The Quiet Girl is Ireland’s first nominee in this category! Ireland has submitted films for consideration in this category nine times before, beginning in 2007.
This is the first film by any of these five directors to be nominated in this category.
This is the first year with no Asian or African nominees since 2012, and only the second time in the last 30 years that neither continent is represented in this category.
ANIMATION
Animated Feature
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On are the 14th and 15th stop-motion animation nominees in this category. Only one stop-motion film has won this category before: 2005’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
If either stop-motion nominee were to win, it would be only the third non-computer-animated film to win in this category, after Wallace & Gromit and Spirited Away (2002), which is hand-drawn.
This is two-time Oscar winner Guillermo Del Toro’s first nomination in the animated feature category—the 5th category in which he has received a nomination.
Del Toro would be the second winner in this category from Mexico, after producer Yvett Merino (Encanto, 2021).
Turning Red is the 17th Pixar film nominated in this category. It would be the 12th winner in this category from Pixar, more than any other studio since the category’s inception in 2001.
This is Domee Shi’s first nomination in the animated feature category; she is a previous winner in the animated short category for Bao (2018). If she wins this year, she will become only the second person, first woman, and first person of color to have won Oscars for both Animated Feature and Animated Short, after Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 2005; and three Animated Short wins, including Creature Comforts, 1991).
Shi is the 12th East Asian nominee in the history of the Animated Feature category, and the second of Chinese descent. She would be the second East Asian filmmaker to win, after Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, 2002).
Shi and Chris Williams are the 6th and 7th Canadian nominees in this category, and either would be the first to win this award.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is the fourth film from the Shrek franchise nominated for this award—the most of any single film series. It’s also the fourteenth nominee produced by Dreamworks Animation, second to Pixar among all studios in this category.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio and The Sea Beast are the 4th and 5th Netflix films nominated in this category. Either would be the first Netflix film to win in this category.
This is the seventh time that one studio has multiple nominees in the same year, and the first time Netflix has multiple nominees.
Animated Short
Sara Gunnarsdóttir is the third Icelandic nominee for Animated Short, and would be the first to win.
Although this is her first individual nomination, Pamela Ribon was part of the writing teams on Oscar-nominated animated features Moana (2016) and Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018).
Ice Merchants is the first Portuguese film nominated for an Oscar in any category.
Matthew Freud is the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud. Yes, that one. He's also the brother-in-law of filmmaker and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Richard Curtis.
DOCUMENTARIES
Documentary Feature
Only seven filmmakers have won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature more than once. Laura Poitras (Citizenfour, 2014) would become the 8th repeat winner if All the Beauty and the Bloodshed wins this year.
Monica Hellström and Simon Lereng Vilmont are the 9th and 10th Danish nominees for Best Documentary Feature, and would be the first ones to win.
Hellström was nominated in this category and Best Animated Feature last year for Flee.
Shane Boris is a double nominee this year, having produced both Fire of Love and Navalny.
Navalny is the second documentary released by CNN films to receive a nomination in this category, after RBG (2018).
Shaunak Sen and Aman Mann are the 3rd and 4th Indian filmmakers nominated for Best Documentary feature, after last year’s nominees Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Gosh (Writing with Fire).
SHORTS
Live Action Short
With his nomination in the Live Action Short Film category this year, Alfonso Cuarón has been nominated eleven times across seven categories—Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, and Live Action Short. That ties him with Kenneth Branagh, who has also been nominated in seven different categories.
Cuarón would be the second Mexican filmmaker to win an Oscar for Live Action Short, after Manuel Arango (Sentinels of Silence, 1971), and the third winner from Latin America, after Arango and Salvadoran filmmaker André Gutffreund (In the Region of Ice, 1976).
Alice Rohrwacher is the 7th Italian filmmaker nominated for Best Live Action Short, and would be the first to win.
Erik Tveiten and Gaute Lid Larssen are the first* Norwegian nominees in this cateogry.
*Hallvar Witzø's nomination for Tuba Atlantic (2011) was rescinded after it was learned that the film had aired on television prior to its theatrical release
Including Anders Walter and Rebecca Pruzan, there have been twelve Danish nominees in this category. Pruzan would be the 8th Danish winner, and Walter would be the second Danish person to win multiple Oscars in this category, after Kim Magnusson—with whom he won his first Oscar for Helium (2013).
Ross White is the 21st Irish filmmaker nominated in this category, and would be fifth Irish winner, after Martin McDonaugh (Six Shooter, 2004), Oorlagh and Terry George (The Shore, 2010), and Benjamin Cleary (Stutterer, 2014).