Oscars 2024: What should win Best Picture?

Christopher Nolan isn’t the only director with a ‘triumphant return to form’ arc at this year’s Oscars. Alexander Payne’s last film, Shrinking, was a rare dud from the genius behind The Descendants and Nebraska.

The Holdovers sees Payne once again teaming up with his Sideways collaborator, Paul Giamatti, to tell a beautifully bittersweet story of three lonely souls finding some form of solace with one another on a snowy Christmas at a stuffy US boarding school.

Make no mistake, every award not won by Oppenheimer on March 10 will feel like a win for the underdog, even with the heft of some of the opposition. That’s a tribute to the momentum behind Chris Nolan’s stunning historical drama, as well as the sheer quality of the film.

Cillian Murphy plays the father of the atomic bomb, initially feted for his work on the infamous Manhattan Project before a humiliating political downfall. Few other films crossed the streams of mainstream entertainment and high art as seamlessly as Oppenheimer over this past year.

Anyone who remembers the buzz around Past Lives when it hit cinemas around September of last year will likely have been shocked that it hasn’t figured more strongly among the awards nominations. Celine Song’s masterful drama has an opportunity to have the last laugh, however, by picking up the Best Picture award.

Greta Lee and Teo Yoo play the childhood friends reunited after spending their adult lives apart on different continents. It’s a deeply affecting story about lost love and the immigrant experience.

American Fiction is possibly the most low-key entry to the Best Picture list, with little of the buzz afforded to the other entries. Still, it’s been incredibly well received. Jeffrey Wright’s performance as a floundering academic attracted particular praise.

Besides being a biting satire of America’s attitude to black art, Cord Jefferson’s movie also contains a rich seam of humour, underpinned by heartfelt family drama. It’s a beguiling concoction that marks it out from its peers.

Anatomy of a Fall has enjoyed a late surge to awards contention, via a long run of independent film awards including the Palme d’Or at Cannes. It’s still in the middle of the pack when it comes to the odds, but victorious campaigns have been sprung from further back before.

Justine Triet’s foreign language film deserves every column inch it has gained, offering a forensic investigation into both an tragic death and a floundering marriage.

The Zone of Interest won the Outstanding British Film award at the BAFTAs, and also Best Film Not in the English Language. While it’s written and directed by British director Jonathan Glazer, it’s set wholly in Nazi Germany, with an all-German cast.

Depicting the eerily ‘normal’ domestic life of Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Höss and his family, The Zone of Interest packs a devastating punch and a sense of artistic daring that could mark it out as one to watch in the Best Picture runnings.

After being nominated for Best Picture in 2018 for The Favourite, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos will be hopeful he can actually win the award this time around with Poor Things. It’s certainly attracting a whole lot of buzz, albeit primarily for the outrageous performance of its lead, Emma Stone.

Still, having won Best Picture at the Golden Globes, Lanthimos’s strange film is itching for an upset. It’s a dark horse alright, and also a pretty twisted one.

Martin Scorsese continues to make vital, hard-hitting, and extremely long films as he heads into his 80s. Killers of the Flower Moon shows he’s lost none of his touch, with its unflinching depiction of the murderous campaign against the oil-rich Osage people in the early 20th century.

If you think Scorsese has received more than his fair share of acclaim in his lengthy career, consider this startling fact: none of the great man’s movies have ever won the Best Picture Oscar.

Bradley Cooper writes, directs, and stars in this biopic of beloved American composer Leonard Bernstein. It’s a film shot through with old fashioned Hollywood glamour, though there’s some concession to modern trickery with the film’s use of both black and white and colour footage.

Maestro’s lack of major awards success so far, as well as its warm but not-quite-glowing reception and some controversy over Cooper’s nasal prosthetics, make it an outside bet. At the same time, there isn’t another film with quite the same pizzazz on this shortlist.

Barbie fans have felt the sting of awards rejection this year, as the film’s outrageous success at the box office and among the critics hasn’t quite manifested in a great deal of nominations. Not at Oppenheimer levels, at least.

Still, Greta Gerwig’s strangely overlooked film remains in contention for the big prize. Could Barbie pull off one final signature coup and secure the Best Picture award from under the noses of those total Kens (we’re reaching here), Nolan and Scorsese?