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PRESENTATIONS

Saturday, February 8, 2025

Sean Baker (Writer/Director/Producer/Editor/ Casting Director)

Mikey Madison (Actor)

Alex Coco (Producer)

Samantha Quan (Producer)

Kelsey Mann (Director)

ORION

OAK MOTION PICTURES

SIX FEET FILMS

IFC FILMS

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY FILMS

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

Lettering By ANDREW FOOTIT

RaMell Ross (Co-Writer/Director)

Joslyn Barnes (Co-Writer/Producer)

Victoria Warmerdam (Writer/Director)

Trent (Producer)

Cindy Lee (Director)

Darwin Shaw (Writer/Producer/Editor)

Adam Elliot (Writer/Director)

Emily Kassie (Director/Producer/Cinematographer)

Julian Brave NoiseCat (Director)

Myron Kerstein, ACE (Film Editor)

Nancy Nugent Title (Supervising Sound Editor/ Sound Design)

John Marquis (Supervising Sound Editor/ Sound Design/Re-Recording Mixer)

Andy Nelson (Re-Recording Mixer)

Chris Sanders (Writer/Director)

Kris Bowers (Composer)

Randy Thom (Supervising Sound Designer)

Rising From the Ashes

As a delayed Academy Awards season wraps up, Contenders Film: The Nominees offers a chance for one last pitch

By Pete Hammond

The awards season is winding down, the nominations are out, and the final stretch of the race that concludes on March 2, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and the 97th Annual Academy Awards is on now. That means many awards shows leading to the Oscars, including the allimportant Critics Choice, PGA, DGA, WGA, SAG, Independent Spirit Awards, AFI Awards and BAFTA, among others, will be revealing their winners, which could certainly shift the momentum of what is currently one of the most wide-open Oscar races in years.

The LA wildfires tragedy has affected the race, postponing some precursor ceremonies, like Critics Choice, delaying voting and the announcement of Oscar

nominations by a week, and putting into question if the large number of voters in the LA area have had time to even see the movies, much less vote at this point. That is why, at Deadline, we believe our annual Contenders events are so important—first in person in November at the DGA prenominations, and now in the final stretch

Controversy around awards season is not new, but our goal is, as always, to let the films speak for themselves.

with our virtual live-streamed event on February 8, featuring a variety of films across many categories. Consider it onestop shopping in some ways, but it is also an event designed to get voters more engaged and excited, and maybe even to catch up in this troubled season.

Although Emilia Pérez led the Oscar nominations with a near-record 13 when they were finally announced on January 23, recent unearthing of past controversial X posts by its Best Actress-nominated star Karla Sofía Gascón, the first ever trans acting nominee, has made a hard-to-call race even harder to call, and now has, by extension, made a tight race even tighter. Other controversies regarding much nominated films like The Brutalist and its use of AI, the acting nominations for the Donald Trump origin film The Apprentice, and much

unpredictable, but also political, whether the Academy wants it or not.

Of course controversy around awards season is nothing new, but our purpose and goal is, as always, to let the films speak for themselves, which is just how it should be. And we have an exciting lineup for you, including such Best Picture contenders as Wicked, Nickel Boys and Anora, along with animated juggernauts like The Wild Robot, Inside Out 2 and Memoir of a Snail, plus much more. The filmmakers, nominated across the board in many of the upcoming awards shows and the Oscars themselves, will be on hand to talk about their achievements and just what got them here. We hope it is a valuable service for voters everywhere this season and encourages them ultimately to be sure to see these films, not just hear about them.

Enjoy Contenders Film: The Nominees.

MODERATORS Meet the

The Deadline staffers who’ll be guiding you through this year’s Contenders

YOUR HOST

ANTONIA BLYTH

Senior Awards Editor

Antonia has contributed to Deadline and AwardsLine’s print magazines since 2014. A native Brit based in LA, prior to joining, she covered West Coast entertainment for ELLE. com, and her work has been featured in The Guardian, U.K. Marie Claire and InStyle. She has written a New York Times bestselling non-fiction book and has appeared regularly on French television network TF1 as an entertainment expert.

YOUR MODERATORS

PETE HAMMOND Awards Columnist/ Chief Film Critic

Pete, widely considered to be one of the pre-eminent awards analysts for both film and television, has for the past 14 years been Deadline’s Awards Columnist covering the yearround Oscar and Emmy seasons. He is also Deadline’s Chief Film Critic, having previously reviewed films for MovieLine, Boxoffice magazine, Backstage, Hollywood.com and Maxim, as well as Leonard Maltin’s Movie

Guide for which he was a contributing editor. In addition to writing, Pete is also host of the PBS SoCal Cinema Series and the weekly PBS television series Must See Movies. He previously held producing positions at Entertainment Tonight, Extra, Access Hollywood, The Arsenio Hall Show, The Martin Short Show and AMC Networks and is the recipient of five Emmy nominations for writing. Pete is only the second journalist to have received the Publicists Guild of America’s Press Award twice, in 1996 and 2013.

MATTHEW CAREY

Documentary Editor, Awards

Matthew Carey joined Deadline full time in 2020, after a long association as a freelancer, to specialize in coverage of the nonfiction film landscape. Matthew is a writer and producer whose work has appeared on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Español. He has written extensively about documentary film for CNN and CNN.com, Documentary magazine, NBCNews.com and TheWrap.

ANTHONY D’ALESSANDRO

Editorial Director/ Box Office Editor

Anthony covers box office, breaking film news, awardsseason features and festival news. His first job in the film industry was at Savoy Pictures’

headquarters in New York where he worked in film distribution. In the summer of 1999, he was hired by Variety and moved to Los Angeles, and remained in the newsroom covering numerous parts of the industry, including box office, for about a decade. Prior to arriving at Deadline in the fall of 2011, where he co-edited the site’s sister publication AwardsLine, Anthony covered the box office beat for Indiewire’s Thompson on Hollywood. He also co-produced Matt Walsh’s film A Better You.

RYAN FLEMING

Crafts Editor, Awards

Ryan joined Deadline in March 2021 as Assistant Editor for AwardsLine. He received his MFA in Studio Art at The City College of New York in 2019. He contributes to the awards

coverage of animation and the craft side of film and television. In his role as Crafts Editor, Ryan also contributes to the editing of Deadline’s AwardsLine magazines and interviews contenders above and below the line.

FILMS The

DISNEY PIXAR

● Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2 continues the story of Riley Anderson (Kensington Tallman) and her internal emotional network during her teenage years. As she hits puberty, a crew of new emotions shows up, upsetting the balance that Joy (Amy Poehler) has created in Riley’s mind. The film also includes the voices of Maya Hawke, Tony Hale, Lewis Black and Ayo Edebiri.

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

● The Wild Robot

Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot, based on Peter Brown’s 2016 bestseller, follows Rozzum 7134 (Lupita Nyong’o), aka ‘Roz’—a brand new robot that gets shipwrecked during a typhoon on an island populated with animals but no humans. While on the island, Roz discovers the unhatched egg of a gosling (Kit Connor) whose family she inadvertently killed. Because of this, she takes on the role of protector, with the help of a sly fox (Pedro Pascal).

1 Sugarcane

2 Inside Out 2

3 Memoir of a Snail

4 The Wild Robot

IFC FILMS

● Memoir of a Snail

Set in 1970s Australia, the film centers around Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook), a melancholic recluse who finds comfort in the hording of snail memorabilia after a life marred by emotional setbacks. Recounting her life to a pet garden snail, Grace reveals her various trials and tribulations, which range from being born with a cleft palate to separation from her brother (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and heartbreak as an adult.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY FILMS

● Sugarcane

The film, directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, centers on an investigation into the discovery of unmarked graves at the St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School in British Columbia, an institution run by the Catholic Church, where generations of Indigenous children suffered sexual, physical and psychological abuse. After years of silence, the forced separation, assimilation and abuse many children experienced at these segregated boarding schools was brought to light, sparking a national outcry against a system designed to destroy Indigenous communities.

The FILMS

NEON

● Anora

Sean Baker’s film is a dramedy that follows a young woman named Anora (Mikey Madison), who connects with Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), a younger wealthy Russian client at the strip club where she works. Soon after meeting, Vanya offers Anora the chance to be his girlfriend for the week. Unexpectedly, the two decide to elope, but their wedded bliss is cut short when Vanya’s Russian oligarch parents find out.

OAK MOTION PICTURES

● I’m Not a Robot Dutch filmmaker Victoria Warmerdam’s dark comedy I’m Not a Robot follows Lara, a music producer, who, after repeatedly failing rudimentary CAPTCHA tests, questions whether or not she might actually be a robot. As her life spirals out of control upon learning that there’s an 87% chance she’s AI, her search for answers begs the question: what does it mean to be human?

ORION PICTURES/ AMAZON MGM STUDIOS

● Nickel Boys

by RaMell Ross, the film chronicles the close friendship between two teenagers (Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson) who have overcome the shocking brutality and horrific discriminatory regulations of a Florida reform school in the Jim Crow South. The film also stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

SIX FEET FILMS

● The Last Ranger

Directed by Cindy Lee, this short film is inspired by the true story of Thandi, a rhino that survived a brutal attack by poachers at the Kariega Game Reserve in the South African Eastern Cape. It stars Avumile Qongqo as Khuselwa, a ranger, joined by her protégé Litha (Liyabona Mroqoza), in the fight to protect the animals.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

● Wicked

Jon M. Chu’s film follows the story of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), a young woman misunderstood because of her unusual green skin and her magic powers. Gilded by privilege and cunning, Glinda (Ariana Grande) is a popular young woman who desires to wield magic. When the two meet as students at Shiz University in Oz it spawns a rivalry that turns into a profound friendship. 5