The next Oscars scandal is already brewing

_{A version of this story first appeared The Ankler.}

Happy Monday and I received a reader question that got me thinking about what could be a scandal for this awards season. Fresh from the barbie The director was so blatant that it inspired a tweet Hillary Clintoncould another all-male Best Director line-up spark a new wave of backlash? Kenough already!

“And here are the male nominees”

Last week I received a question from a reader (hello Alexander!) that put an end to something that has 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 directed by women,” Alexander wrote, “and I’m curious if someone unexpected might emerge as the race begins to clear up in the coming months , even as a lone director.”

He is right. Of the major female-led candidates, the vast majority of them— Marielle Heller‘s night dog, Coralie Forgeat‘s The Substance, Nora Fingscheidt‘s The Outrun, Halina Reijn‘s Girl — is being discussed mostly for her lead actress performances, 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) i Saoirse Ronan (Little Women) are just a few recent examples of actresses nominated for roles in films for which their female directors did not receive the same recognition.

While there’s no obvious film directed by a woman to break out of this pack, the Best Director category feels very fluid right now, with Anora’s Sean Baker leading the pack and everyone else playing behind him. In the Gold Derby aggregate prediction odds, Heller is the highest-ranked director, at . . . 12th (!) place.

This means that Alexander may be right to expect that something unexpected might come up, but it will be a real surprise, because right now I have no idea who it might be.

Buzz Builders

Although press screenings do a few weeks ago, I enjoyed watching my fellow journalists fall so hard hard truths as I did in Toronto, most of the public screenings are still unfolding. It seems safe to predict another wave of acclaim for Cannes premieres heading into Oscar season Anora, Emilia Pérez, or the presentation of international articles from Germany The Seed of Fig.

I’m also looking forward to seeing what happens A real paina big priority for Searchlight which premiered at Sundance and played Telluride but for some reason stayed out of Toronto where I’m sure it would have done well. New Yorker Jesse Eisenberg writes, directs and stars opposite Kieran Culkin as a pair of American cousins ​​visiting Holocaust landmarks in Poland; is sure to hit its mark at NYFF ahead of its November 1st release.

The most fascinating premiere, however, came on October 10, when Steve McQueen‘s Blitz made its American debut after opening at the London Film Festival a few days earlier. It doesn’t usually matter much if something is a world premiere at NYFF (the festival slate is so selective that it all seems like a big deal), but there’s a lot of curiosity about the WWII drama. Blitzone of the few award contenders not yet widely screened.

The rest of the fall festival season is underway, taking place in small, chic areas and cities like the Hamptons, Mill Valley, Middleburg, Newport Beach, Savannah, and Montclair, NJ, where you can see me! The audiences for these festivals are somewhat different from the NYFF audience, albeit with significant overlap. We’ll talk about it soon.

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