It’s Oscar time: welcome to our coverage of the announcement of the nominations for the 97th Academy Awards.
The pinnacle of the film awards season is upon us, and though it might struggle to compete with the Dáil for popcorn drama these days, the big reveal of the nominees carries its own intrigue.
Whose career is on the up to the envy of all their peers? Who will narrowly miss out on a much longed-for nod? Will Kneecap convert its shortlisting for best international feature into a nomination for Ireland? Will any Irish stars make it, against the odds, into the acting categories?
Over the past decade the likes of Kerry Condon, Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan and Saoirse Ronan have all got on to the final grid. Sadly, recent nominations for other major awards indicate that, barring miracles, there will be no Irish actors among the 2025 Oscar nominees.
But our chief film correspondent Donald Clarke reports that the Kneecap team, after an astonishing performance in the Bafta nominations, can now feel reasonably confident of a spot among the best international film nominees. Might they also compete for best original song? Watch out also for some potential Irish interest in the live action short category.
The countdown is on. From 1.30pm (Irish time), actors Rachel Sennott and Bowen Yang will announce the nominations live from the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.
In the meantime, here are some key reads on the backdrop to this year’s film shindig, plus the state of play for Hollywood and the Irish screen industry, starting with this set of nomination predictions from our chief film correspondent, Donald Clarke.
- Donald Clarke on Oscars 2025: What are the chances for Kneecap, Saoirse Ronan and Cillian Murphy?
- The Oscars aren’t fair. Just look at what’s happening to Cillian Murphy
- Screen industry boosts Irish economy by €1bn amid ‘drastic’ global change
- Show must go on in ‘great but very troubled’ Hollywood. But how?
This is not an easy year to predict the nominees of the biggest awards, never mind call who will be the actual winners on Oscars night. Best picture, in particular, is wide open, with The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez, Anora and Conclave all tipped at one point or other. Another question is whether The Substance’s Coralie Fargeat can become just the eighth woman in Oscars history to be nominated for best director.
Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown seems to have the edge for best actor, and would be a popular choice, but it would be foolish to rule out a second best actor award for The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody.
For best actress, Demi Moore has the much-coveted “momentum” for her comeback role in The Substance, but again nothing is certain – at one point, it seemed Anora’s Mikey Madison was going to storm it.
I’d love to see A Complete Unknown’s Edward Norton take best supporting actor, but it seems Kieran Culkin – riding a wave of acclaim after his turn as Roman Roy in television series Succession – is the closest thing to a lock for his role in Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, while best supporting actress may be a race between Emilia Pérez’s Zoe Saldana and Wicked’s Ariana Grande.
One thing we now know about the ceremony is that the Academy is “thrilled” to bring back what it calls its “Fab 5″ moments. This is where a line-up of “individual film artists” – aka past winners – shower praise on the acting nominees before one of them is anointed and four of them are brutally dismissed.
This was cringe city last year and I predict it will be again this time.
Just two years after An Cailín Ciúin was nominated for the best international feature film Oscar, could Ireland be on track to receive what would be only its second-ever nod in this category?
Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair are all predicting that Kneecap will make the cut, while the film’s director, Rich Peppiatt, is among those gathering in Belfast for the announcement of the Oscar nominations – a high-risk move, but one that reflects a certain level of expectation.
It will be a huge achievement if the raucous and subversive Kneecap makes it to the final five from the 86 submissions in this category. Every year, many brilliant films do not make the final cut, with titles thought to be shoo-ins falling by the wayside as 15 shortlisted features become five.
This only highlights the significance of Colm Bairéad’s An Cailín Ciúin/The Quiet Girl in claiming Ireland’s first-ever nomination for what the Academy used to call best foreign language film, back in 2023. Only one other Irish submission has even made the 15-strong shortlist: Paddy Breathnach’s Spanish language Viva in 2015.
If Kneecap’s semi-fictionalised account of the rise of the Belfast rap trio, written and directed by Peppiatt, makes it all the way to the Oscars, it would represent a remarkable feat for an energising comedy with a point to make throughout the hilarity. Already, people are talking about the “Kneecap effect” on interest in the Irish language.
Incidentally, sometimes success really does have many fathers: Kneecap’s cross-Border support comes from Northern Ireland Screen, the Irish Language Broadcast Fund, Screen Ireland, the BFI (awarding National Lottery funding), Coimisiún na Meán and TG4, among others.
This has not been a normal year for the Oscars. Today’s nominations broadcast was twice postponed and the voting window for members was twice extended as a result of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles that saw the city of dreams turn into the city of nightmares.
As I type this, there are reports that a new blaze has broken out in what is clearly a time of ongoing stress, shock and uncertainty.
But for now the show is scheduled to go on: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says the Oscars ceremony will go ahead at Hollywood’s Dolby Theater on Sunday, March 2nd – or in the early hours of Monday, March 3rd, in this time zone – and that they will “bring a sense of healing” to the film community.
The plan is that the ceremony, hosted this year by Conan O’Brien, will highlight “the strength, creativity and optimism that defines Los Angeles and our industry”, while also reflecting on recent events.
“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 over a century,” say Academy chief executive Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang.
Not everyone is a fan of the showbusiness-as-usual approach, with novelist Stephen King, a member of the Academy, the most high-profile person to announce he will not be voting this year and that the awards should be cancelled. Could the simple fact of people in LA having bigger things to worry about at the moment affect the nominations?
As I wrote about in this week’s column on Hollywood in the age of wildfires and Donald Trump, the tensions within California’s most famous industry are unlikely to end with the announcement of best picture come Oscar night.
