Sean Baker for Anora

Track record: Baker came out of the US’s microbudget/indie subculture; his first feature, Four Letter Words, was released way back in 2000. But it took a decade and a half for Baker to make a serious breakthrough; Tangerine, shot on iPhones, was the story of a trans sex worker (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), and won Baker some high-profile awards. His follow-up, The Florida Project, another account of marginalised Americans became a fixture on the awards circuit, bagging co-star Willem Dafoe an Oscar nom for best supporting actor. His next film, Red Rocket, premiered in competition at Cannes.

The state of the race: Anora was serious awards-bait straight out of the trap, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes after its world premiere. It went on to be a major player on the awards circuit, with five Golden Globes noms (winning none) and six Oscar noms, as well as scads of critics society wins. For most of the last few months, it looked as if it might be squeezed by The Brutalist on the one side for highbrow artsiness, and Emilia Pérez on the other, which cornered progressive/marginalised sympathies. But with the latter’s implosion, Anora has surged on all fronts – including in Baker’s personal contest with Brady Corbet. Crucially, given the overlap with Oscar voters, Baker took the Directors Guild of America award for best feature; it’s not an absolute given, but the connection with the best director Oscar is well established. Baker can be quietly confident.

What the Guardian said: “An amazing, full-throttle tragicomedy of romance, denial and betrayal.” Read the full review.

Why he should win, and why he might not: Along with Corbet, Baker represents a new generation of American directors; last year, the only American on the directors list was Martin Scorsese, and he’s definitely old school. The Academy, you sense, is restless for change and Baker looks well qualified to provide it, with his contemporary stories that are issue-led and sexy/romantic at the same time. It also helps that he unearthed a stellar lead performer in Mikey Madison, who is putting a serious dent in Demi Moore’s chances of taking the best actress Oscar. Baker now seems the frontrunner, his cred from European festival juries working for him (instead of against, as it often has in the past). Are there any major obstacles? The only cloud on the horizon is questions over the dubious politics of some of its Russian cast, including best supporting actor nominee Yura Borisov; but it seems a remote possibility as to whether it will affect Baker’s chances.

Further reading: ‘I find myself getting in a little too deep’: Sean Baker on his Palme d’Or-winning lapdance film

How to watch Anora
• Aus: in cinemas, buy/rent on digital platforms
• UK: in cinemas, buy/rent on digital platforms
• US: in cinemas, buy/rent on digital platforms

Brady Corbet for The Brutalist

Track record: Corbet had a decent career as an actor, starting out as an 11-year-old; he appeared in Mysterious Skin, 24, and Martha Marcy May Marlene. He launched himself as a director with the prescient Childhood of a Leader, which explored the roots of fascism, and followed it up with the chilling fable Vox Lux, about a musician undergoing a breakdown (casting Natalie Portman in the lead role showed the industry Corbet was on his way). The Brutalist, Corbet’s third feature, is a step up again: massive in scope, an Oscar winner on board as the star, and the kind of high-minded themes only a few directors could approach with any hope of success.

The state of the race: Like Anora, The Brutalist was awards catnip right from the start, winning the best director award at Venice, and as the US awards season got under way, it looked like it was in the driving seat. But as the race has gone on, it seems to have subtly lost ground – partly due to its punishing three-hour run time, and partly due to the sense that, in cutting corners with AI-assisted voices, it may not be able to claim the artistic integrity it was striving for. Having been beaten to the DGA award by Baker but adding the best director Bafta to the Golden Globe, Corbet’s chances feel in the balance. (It can’t have hurt his penniless-artist credibility by saying he’s earned “nothing” from the film.) It wouldn’t be a surprise if he won best director, but neither if he didn’t.

What the Guardian said: “This is a film with thrilling directness and storytelling force, a movie that fills its widescreen and three-and-a-half-hour running time with absolute certainty and ease, as well as glorious amplitude, clarity and even simplicity.” Read the full review.

Why he should win, and why he might not: Few mainstream directors are operating with the kind of thematic ambition that Corbet has shown, and the Academy ought to want to reward someone who, like it or not, has become one of the leaders of American cinema. Corbet’s transformation from interesting-but-fringe actor to major director has been a fascinating shift, and there’s no doubt that he’s using the opportunity to make films about things that really matter in America: two of them are about fascism and the other about the psychic trauma of gun violence. If his campaign can get enough voters to connect with this, then he should be home and dry. It comes down, perhaps, to whether the Oscar voters will opt for The Brutalist’s high drama or Anora’s exuberance as to which director will carry off the award.

Further reading: The Brutalist director Brady Corbet: ‘If you’re not daring to suck, you’re not doing much’

How to watch The Brutalist
• Aus: in cinemas
• UK: in cinemas
• US: in cinemas

James Mangold for A Complete Unknown

Track record: Mangold has been on a longer journey than most: he emerged from the mid-90s indie subworld with a couple of fashionable films, the second of which, Cop Land, boasted an improbably heavyweight cast including Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro. His next film, Girl, Interrupted, was the one that put Angelina Jolie on the map. In the 00s, though, he seemed to stall somehow; the films he made – Walk the Line, 3.10 to Yuma, Knight and Day, The Wolverine – were still high profile and mostly successful, but somehow missing a directorial personality. That changed when he got aboard the gritty Logan, a follow-up to The Wolverine. Mangold, oddly, was hot again, and moved on to Ford v Ferrari and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – neither film though exactly screaming auteurism. But he found his mojo with the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown which, coupled with the hottest young actor of the moment, Timothée Chalamet, has given Mangold his first best director Oscar nom.

The state of the race: Nobody was really talking about A Complete Unknown as the campaign got under way, partly because it skipped the autumn festivals and instead went straight to a theatrical release very late in the window, just before Christmas. But glowing reviews have helped it, as well as Chalamet’s perky media profile, meaning that Mangold could well be in the mix. The lion’s share of the awards attention, though, has been going to the actors; Mangold is really only an outside bet.

What the Guardian said: “Interestingly the story, despite the classic music-biopic tropes that Mangold did so much to popularise, does not conform to the classic rise-fall-learning-experience-comeback format. It’s all rise, but troubled and unclear.” Read the full review.

Why he should win, and why he might not: A director with as many top-notch credits as Mangold has certainly earned his corn, and at some point the Academy will want to reward that. (Though, as history records, it took the likes of Martin Scorsese six goes before getting his directing Oscar, so maybe Mangold hasn’t yet been through the mill enough.) Nevertheless, there’s an air of zeitgeist-catching around the film, refocusing attention on Dylan and satisfactorily conjuring up his rebel spirit – and Mangold is benefiting from that. Perhaps not working so much in his favour is a certain absence of authorial presence in his work; pretty much everything he’s done from the 00s onwards has been putatively commercial in intent; it’s hard to inject much personality into an Indiana Jones or Marvel movie. Mangold’s much admired versatility might actually work against his awards chances.

Further reading: ‘It’s full of things that didn’t happen – but it feels right!’ Inside the making of Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown
‘The hair, the voice, the casual cruelty – they nailed it!’ Bob Dylan experts rate A Complete Unknown

How to watch A Complete Unknown
• Aus: in cinemas
• UK: in cinemas
• US: in cinemas

Jacques Audiard for Emilia Pérez

Track record: With a porkpie hat permanently perched atop his head, Audiard is one of France’s most recognisable film directors, as well as one of its most renowned. The son of a film director himself, he exploded into international consciousness with his second feature, A Self-Made Hero, in 1996; starring Mathieu Kassovitz as a fake wartime resistance fighter, it won best screenplay at Cannes. Subsequent films – Read My Lips, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet – solidified his reputation as a film-maker of intense, brilliantly modulated crime dramas; he subsequently applied similar levels of emotional and storytelling force to an odd-couple love story (Rust and Bone) and the immigrant experience (Dheepan), winning a long overdue Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2015 for the latter. He crossed over to English-language film-making with The Sisters Brothers, a western starring John C Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix but Audiard, with only a limited command of English, soon headed back to France. Emilia Pérez, a trans gangster musical, is something else again: a typically bold reconfiguration of his style around a film it’s simply impossible to imagine an Anglo-American director of similar stature taking on.

The state of the race: With Netflix behind it, and the progressive vote apparently cornered, Emilia Pérez roared into awards season after the leading cast collectively picked up the best actress prize at Cannes (as well as the third place jury prize for the film itself). Its confrontational confidence appeared well placed as it picked up four Golden Globes (including best picture – musical or comedy) and emerged, even more impressively, with 13 Oscar nominations. But a few days later it all fell apart when the contents of star Karla Sofía Gascón’s social-media feed became apparent. Audiard, despite his heavyweight back catalogue, was perhaps not a favourite for best director, as he’s hitherto not managed to make huge inroads into the Anglo-American film audience, but had the film’s momentum continued, he might have been pulled along with it. But now it looks very unlikely.

What the Guardian said: “Anglo-progressives and US liberals might worry about whether or not certain stories are ‘theirs to tell’. But that’s not a scruple that worries French auteur Jacques Audiard who, with amazing boldness and sweep, launches into this slightly bizarre yet watchable musical melodrama of crime and gender, set in Mexico. It plays like a thriller by Amat Escalante with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and a touch of Almodóvar.” Read the full review.

Why he should win, and why he might not: Non-British European directors don’t really flourish at the Oscars; only two – Roman Polanski and Michel Hazanavicius – have won the best director Oscar this century. Audiard’s appearance in the Oscars race at all would have seemed improbable six months ago, but it shouldn’t be an issue for such an exceptional film-maker. (His only previous appearance was for a best foreign language film nomination in 2010, for A Prophet.) Moreover, Audiard isn’t some kind of heritage-oriented conservative – his blazingly unusual films are thoroughly contemporary and, while an outlier in his oeuvre, Emilia Pérez is not massively out of character. What may go against him is his seeming bafflement in the face of protest and disquiet; apologies and hurt feelings are just not part of the lexicon of auteurs of his status, and his attempt to patch up relations with annoyed Mexicans, as well as Gascón, have the feel of someone doing it at gunpoint. Oscar voters, you suspect, don’t take to someone who, deep down, doesn’t appear to care if they are upset.

Further reading: The rise and fall of Emilia Pérez: how did it all go so wrong for the Oscar-nominated film and its star?

How to watch Emilia Pérez
• Aus: in cinemas
• UK: streaming on Netflix
• US: in cinemas, streaming on Netflix

Coralie Fargeat for The Substance

Track record: The Substance is Fargeat’s second feature, and like several of the above, won a significant award on its first appearance: best screenplay at Cannes. Flying the flag for horror – and specifically body horror – she created what in retrospect looks like a rehearsal for the film in her 2014 short, Reality+, about a brain implant that allows users to see themselves with their dream bodies. She made her feature debut in 2017 with Revenge, part of a newly radical strand of French genre film-making along with Julia Ducournau (whose body horror Titane won the Palme d’Or in 2021). Revenge, a rape-revenge thriller, did well on the cult circuit, but The Substance took things up more than a notch, with its super-contemporary themes of body anxiety and astute deployment of Demi Moore in the lead role.

The state of the race: The second French director in the best director list is also the only female; as such, she stands out from the crowd. But given this award, probably more than any of the other Oscars, is a kind of career reward, Fargeat’s slim back catalogue means she’s right at the back of the betting. Moore is pulling most of what awards action there is her way; it’s hard to see Fargeat making much of a dent here.

What the Guardian said: “This is a cheerfully silly and outrageously indulgent piece of gonzo body-horror comedy, lacking in subtlety, body-positivity or positivity of any sort. Roger Corman would have loved it. It’s flawed and overlong but there’s a genius bit of casting in Demi Moore who is a very good sport about the whole thing.” Read the full review.

Why she should win, and why she might not: Fargeat may be the outlier, but she represents the cutting edge: female-driven body horror that has a lot to say about the modern world. Whether this will round up enough votes to give her the Oscar is another question; there are plenty of people rooting for what would be only the fourth woman to win the award in its entire history. Fargeat may also benefit from the perception of a casting masterstroke, up there with Quentin Tarantino and John Travolta; industry voters will know what it took to get Moore into her film. That said, genre films, and particularly horror, tend to struggle in the final awards straight. For Fargeat to win would be a major shock.

Further reading: ‘Before Ozempic we had amphetamines. But it’s always the same violence’: Coralie Fargeat on women, ageing and Hollywood

How to watch The Substance
• Aus: in cinemas, buy/rent on digital platforms
• UK: in cinemas, buy/rent on digital platforms, streaming on Mubi
• US: in cinemas, buy/rent on digital platforms, streaming on Mubi