“Oscars 2025: Emilia Pérez Sets Record with 13 Nominations, The Brutalist and Wicked Follow Close Behind” Oscar nominations 2025/Emilia Perez//The brutalist//Anora//A complete unknown//Oscar nominations//Rachel Sennott

Content Table

• Jacques Audiard’s trans musical breaks record for most nominations for a film not in the English language.
• Star Carla Sofia Gascón becomes first trans actor to be nominated for an Oscar.
• Pamela Anderson, Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie were snubbed
• Oscar’s nominations 2025: Emilia Pérez breaks record with 13 as The Brutalist and Wicked both trail with 10
• Oscar’s nominations 2025: the full list

Oscar nominations 2025/Emilia Perez

Emilia Perez, in Jacques Audiard’s musical film about a transgender gainer running away from crowds in Mexico, has broken the record for the most Oscar nominations earned by a film other than the English language.

The film was up for 13 awards when it was announced Thursday — three more than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2001 and Roma in 2018.

Oscar nominations 2025, The brutalist

The identity of its star Carla Sofia Gascón marks the first time a transgender actor has been nominated for an Oscar; Elliot Page was nominated for Juno in 2008, 12 years before he came out as transgender. Audiard’s film was shortlisted twice, for supporting actress (for Zoe Saldana), director, picture, adapted screenplay, international feature, editing, cinematography, makeup and hairstyling, original score, best sound and original song.

Meanwhile, The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour epic about a Hungarian architect, played by Adrien Brody, who moves to America after World War II, scored 10 nominations, as did Wicked, a film adaptation of the Broadway show’s box office smash.

James Managold’s boob job biopic and complete unknown got nominations, along with Edward Berjer’s sinful thriller Conclav, in which Ralph Fiennes starred. But Berjer, like any old poet on the Western Front who had been in vain for many years, fell short of finding a standard for reference and in the absence of a similar standard for supporting actresses, including those who used stone, Stanly Tucci, and the Lucian Msamati, the only other standard for supporting actresses other than women was Isabella Roseline.

However, the complete unknown performed better than expected. Edward Norton (as peat cigar) and Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez) stood in for awards alongside star Timothy Chalamet.

Only one of the 10 films nominated for best film was directed by a woman – Coralie Fargeat’s controversial body horror The Substance – and Fargeat was also the only female screenwriter with a solo credit across the 10 scripts.

The leading actress category held several surprises, with industry veterans Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie being overlooked for their performances in Babygirl and Maria. Instead, Demi Moore has now become the category frontrunner, having built up considerable momentum since her Golden Globe win earlier this month. Both she and Gascon will face Cynthia Erivo for Wicked, Mikey Madison for Sean Baker’s sex worker romance Enora and Fernanda Torres, who starred in Walter Salles’ real-life tale of a Brazilian kidnapping, I’m Still Here.

There were disappointments from Britons including Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who was tipped to repeat the nomination she received in 1997 for Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies, while reuniting with Leigh for Hard Truths. And neither Hugh Grant (for horror film Heretic) nor Daniel Craig (for erotic passion drama Queers) repeated their Golden Globe nominations to make the final five leading actors.

Joining Brody, Fiennes and Chalamet are Colman Domingo for prison drama Sing Sing and Sebastian Stan for Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice; the inclusion of both Stan and supporting actor Jeremy Strong (as Roy Cohn) could be seen as an attack on Hollywood’s return to the presidency.

Kieran Culkin is the frontrunner for a supporting actor nomination for his turn in Jesse Eisenberg’s Holocaust tour comedy A Real Pain, while Emilia Perez’s Zoe Saldana also looks like a sure bet in the supporting actress race. Denzel Washington, however, failed to secure his 11th nomination for his brilliant role in Gladiator II.

The belated sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 Oscar-sweeping hit was tipped to repeat at this year’s ceremony; in fact, it was only shortlisted for best costume design.

Meanwhile, neither of Luca Guadagnino’s films from last year – Challengers and Queer – received any love from the Academy. Neither were Pamela Anderson or Jamie Lee Curtis nominated for The Last Showgirl.

There was disappointment for Irish-language musical drama Kneecap, which, despite being nominated for six Baftas, failed to make it to the Oscars in any category.

Emilia Perez leads the best international feature shortlist, along with I’m Still Here, Danish baby-killing drama The Girl with the Needle, Mohammad Rasouli’s Iranian Drama the Seed of a Sacred Fig, and Latvian cat cartoon Flo. That film also faces competition on the animated film shortlist from Memoirs of a Snail, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Foul, The Wild Robot (which received three nominations overall), and Inside Out 2, which was considered an outside bet for a best film nomination.

The documentary shortlist is similarly tilted toward action-chew films, with no room for Will Ferrell’s Road trip Will & Harper or a look at the life of Christopher Reeve. Instead, No Other Land, a critical investigation into the destruction of the west coast’s Misfar Yatta district, competes for the prize against The Porcelain War about Ukrainian artists, Black Box Diaries about a seminal sexual assault case in Japan, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, an ambitious jazz-fuelled study of the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, and Sugarcane, an investigation into the Canadian Indian residential school system.

This year’s nominations were delayed twice to give more time for 10,000 voters – about 60% of whom live in Los Angeles – to watch the films and cast their ballots following the California wildfires. Voting closed last Friday; it’s unclear what effect the latter controversy will have on the use of AI in The Brutalist and Emilia Perez. ‘It was like living it all over again’… Shiori Ito in Black Box Diaries (2024) ‘Editing it was like exposure therapy’: Shiori Ito, the reluctant face of Japan’s #MeToo movement Read more Both films used the technique for voice-cloning: the first film replaced the Hungarian accents of Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, while the second enhanced the singing voice of Emilia Perez as Carla Sofia Gascón. Speaking after the revelations, The Brutalist director Brady Corbet defended his stars, saying: “Adrian and Felicity’s performances are entirely their own.”

A letter sent to all members on Wednesday by Academy CEO Bill Cramer and President Janet Yang confirmed that the ceremony would “celebrate the work that unites us as a global film community and acknowledge those who have so valiantly fought against wildfire”.

“We will honour Los Angeles as the City of Dreams, showcasing its beauty and resilience, as well as its role as a beacon for filmmakers and creative visionaries for more than a century,” he added. “We will reflect on recent events while highlighting the strength, creativity and optimism that define Los Angeles and our industry.” The Academy also announced it would “step away” from live performances during the telecast in Favor of honouring songwriters, whose involvement has long been felt as minimal in the ceremony. This year’s Oscars will take place on March 2, and Conan O’Brien will host. The Bafta Awards will take place a fortnight earlier, on February 16.