Oscar nominations 2025: full list defies tradition in Trump era

And that’s what we call a volte face. Last Oscar season it was all about tradition, the Hollywood establishment and celebrating the masculine energy of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer — a film that entered the Oscar race with 13 nominations and cleaned up on the night with seven wins. This year the frontrunner slot, also with 13 nominations, goes to a truly bonkers endeavour: Emilia Pérez, a French-made, Mexican-set gun-toting musical about a drug-running mobster who becomes a trans woman philanthropist. Only in Hollywood. 

The film, directed and co-written by the French arthouse legend Jacques Audiard (A Prophet), snapped up nominations in all the big categories, with a notable absence in the best actor slot — arguably because the best male character in the film becomes female in the movie, and is played by Karla Sofía Gascón, who is rightfully up for best actress. 

Emilia Pérez’s chief rival is The Brutalist, which has ten nominations. Can this musical emulate Oppenheimer’s success and sweep the boards? A wide-ranging Oscar triumph for a trans movie musical at the dawn of the second Trump era is an intriguing political prospect. Will he send in the troops? Or will they already be there because of Sebastian Stan’s savagely good, and now Oscar-nominated (best actor), performance as a thin-skinned Trump in The Apprentice? 

Elsewhere in the acting categories there were snubs for A-listers Daniel Craig and Angelina Jolie. Craig has given the performance of a lifetime, certainly of his professional career, playing the gay alcoholic and drug-addicted William Lee in the period drama Queer. He’s been on most awards lists so far this season, and even though he’s mostly been beaten by Adrien Brody (for The Brutalist), his absence from the Oscars list is bound to hurt. Especially when Timothée Chalamet made the grade for his profoundly trite Stars in Their Eyes turn as Bob Dylan in the dopey biopic A Complete Unknown.

Jolie too was commitment incarnate for the awards season entry Maria, and was said to have undergone seven months of vocal training to play Maria Callas in that biopic. But, like Craig, she was locked out of the best actress category, a race that will surely be won by Demi Moore. She won’t win it for her movie — the mildly moronic gross-out horror The Substance — but for embracing this year’s “Hollywood loves a comeback” narrative (see previous winners Brendan Fraser for The Whale, Ke Huy Quan from Everything Everywhere All at Once etc).

Other notables in the nominations list included a correction to Bafta’s near hysterical appreciation of Conclave: Bafta gave it 12 nominations, the Academy a more modest eight. The ten for Brady Corbet’s masterly The Brutalist seem just about right. That historical epic, traditional in many ways, may well be the title that Oscar voters pivot to on the night — should they lose their appetite for a wacky trans movie musical sweep. 

Oscar 2025 nominations full list

Best picture 

• Anora
• The Brutalist
• A Complete Unknown
• Conclave
• Dune: Part Two
• Emilia Pérez
• I’m Still Here
• Nickel Boys
• The Substance
• Wicked

Best director 

• Sean Baker, Anora
• Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
• James Mangold, A Complete Unknown
• Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
• Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Best actor 

• Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
• Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
• Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
• Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
• Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Best actress 

• Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
• Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
• Mikey Madison, Anora
• Demi Moore, The Substance
• Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here

Best supporting actor 

• Yura Borisov, Anora 
• Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
• Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
• Guy Pearce, The Brutalist 
• Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Best supporting actress 

• Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
• Ariana Grande, Wicked
• Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
• Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
• Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Best adapted screenplay 

• A Complete Unknown
• Conclave
• Emilia Pérez
• Nickel Boys
• Sing Sing

Best original screenplay 

• Anora
• The Brutalist
• A Real Pain
• September 5
• The Substance

Best film editing 

• Anora
• The Brutalist
• Conclave
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked

Best cinematography 

• The Brutalist
• Dune: Part Two
• Emilia Pérez
• Maria
• Nosferatu

Best visual effects 

• Alien: Romulus
• Better Man
• Dune: Part Two
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Wicked

Best international feature 

• I’m Still Here (Brazil)
• The Girl with the Needle (Denmark)
• Emilia Pérez (France)
• The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany)
• Flow (Latvia)

Best documentary feature 

• Black Box Diaries
• No Other Land
• Porcelain War
• Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
• Sugarcane

Best documentary short 

• Death by Numbers
• I Am Ready, Warden
• Incident
• Instruments of a Beating Heart
• The Only Girl in the Orchestra

Best animated feature 

• Flow
• Inside Out 2
• Memoir of a Snail
• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
• The Wild Robot

Best animated short 

• Beautiful Men
• In the Shadow of the Cypress
• Magic Candies
• Wander to Wonder
• Yuck!

Best live-action short 

• Alien
• Anuja
• I’m Not a Robot
• The Last Ranger
• The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best production design 

• The Brutalist
• Conclave
• Dune: Part Two
• Nosferatu
• Wicked

Best costume design 

• A Complete Unknown 
• Conclave
• Gladiator II
• Nosferatu
• Wicked

Best make-up and hairstyling 

• A Different Man
• Emilia Pérez
• Nosferatu
• The Substance
• Wicked

Best sound 

• A Complete Unknown
• Dune: Part Two
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked
• The Wild Robot

Best original song 

• El Mal from Emilia Pérez
• The Journey from The Six Triple Eight
• Like a Bird from Sing Sing
• Mi Camino from Emilia Pérez
• Never Too Late from Elton John: Never Too Late 

Best original score 

• The Brutalist
• Conclave
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked
• Wild Robot