Every year, watching the full lineup of Academy Award nominees exposes me to incredible filmmaking I would likely otherwise miss. This filmmaking most often occurs in the show’s three “feature” categories: Best Animated Feature Film, Best Documentary Feature Film and Best International Feature Film.
These categories often include remarkable features from around the world that might otherwise struggle to find such a profound audience. As the nominations for these branches become increasingly diverse, the line-ups become that much more exciting. While I noted that the short film categories often end up a mixed bag, I can only point to one film of the following 14 nominees that I consider a miss.
In this series for Ampersand, I will break down every category for the 2025 Academy Awards. In each category, I will evaluate the individual nominees and predict the eventual winner. Though only Best Picture utilizes a preferential ballot for Oscar voting, I will include what my preferential ballot would be for every category if I were a voter.
Best Animated Feature Film
The Nominees: “Flow,” “Inside Out 2,” “Memoir of a Snail,” “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” “The Wild Robot”
Predicted Winner: “The Wild Robot”
In Best Animated Feature, I fight between my head and my heart. The category features a deadlock between “The Wild Robot” and “Flow,” both of which picked up a number of precursor awards — “Flow” took home the Golden Globe and National Board of Review award, while “The Wild Robot” won at Critics’ Choice and the Producers Guild Awards. For months, it seemed like “The Wild Robot” would be an unstoppable juggernaut for DreamWorks.
And it would be a worthy winner. “The Wild Robot” highlights the difference between children’s schlock and a true “family film.” Chris Sanders’ film, based on Peter Brown’s children’s book of the same name, carries true emotional weight with touching performances and a stirring score from Kris Bowers. While some DreamWorks films settle for childish mediocrity, “The Wild Robot” reminds audiences of the studio’s best work. I never believed this film would become the fourth animated film to break into Best Picture, but that narrative existed for a reason.
Yet “Flow” started to develop its own winning streak. One of my favorite movies of 2024, Gints Zilbalodis’ animated feature follows a cat (named “Flow” on social media by the director after the film’s release) and its group of animal companions attempting to survive a flood in a seemingly post-human world. The film lacks dialogue, trusting audiences to engage with environmental storytelling and a simple adventure.
Zilbalodis wore many hats for the film’s production, serving as director, a writer, editor, cinematographer and a composer; his passion pours out of the screen. This film completely hooked me, and I frequently encourage those around me to check it out on Max. Seeing it appear as Latvia’s entry in the International Feature category delighted me on nomination morning.
Though the two frontrunners clearly stand out from the pack, the Animated Feature nominees all carry their weight. My least favorite of the category, “Inside Out 2” lacks the profundity of its predecessor, yet Maya Hawke’s character Anxiety still makes for a memorable and meaningful addition to the franchise. Though often strange and off-putting, “Memoir of a Snail” holds the distinction of being the only film in this category to make me cry. And any time I get with my friends Wallace and Gromit is time well spent.
Though I lack a list of five strong replacements for this line-up, I do wish that the 60-minute Japanese feature “Look Back” made the cut — an emotional film about creation, connection and loss, available now on Amazon Prime.
My Preferential Ballot: “Flow,” “The Wild Robot,” “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” “Memoir of a Snail,” “Inside Out 2”
Best Documentary Feature Film
The Nominees: “Black Box Diaries,” “No Other Land,” “Porcelain War,” “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” “Sugarcane”
Predicted Winner: “No Other Land”
“Somebody watches something, they are touched, and then?”
Yuval Abraham asks this question near the end of “No Other Land,” one of this year’s nominees for Best Documentary Feature. Abraham, an Israeli journalist, served as one of four directors on the film — Rachel Szor (an Israeli cinematographer), Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal (both Palestinian activists/journalists) round out the group. The documentary follows Abraham and Adra’s burgeoning friendship and professional relationship as the pair documents the destruction of Masafer Yatta — Adra’s home in the West Bank — by Israeli military.
Abraham’s words cut like a knife, Adra offering words of exhausted hope in return. Aside from a brief sequence at the film’s conclusion, Adra, Abraham and crew shot “No Other Land” entirely before October of 2023. Their documentary premiered soon after at Berlin Film Festival in Feb. 2024, where it won both the Berlinale Documentary Film Award and the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film. This began a streak of “No Other Land” securing numerous awards at various festivals and ceremonies.
Yet no distributor in the United States picked up the film, forcing the directors to independently distribute. Following their appearance at Berlinale, Germany’s Commissioner for Culture and the Media clarified that she clapped only for Abraham at the ceremony, not for Adra. Today, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu discuss plans to remove the Palestinian people from their land entirely, an act of ethnic cleansing that would allow Trump to turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
“No Other Land” conveys an enraging story in a profound and human way. It succeeds on every level. I can think of no single film from 2024 that deserves recognition more than this one. Yet still, even as “No Other Land” earns awards, even as journalists such as myself write of its importance and quality, the question of “And then?” looms large. The question is inextricable from the piece as a whole.
I encourage readers to check out Divya Subbiah’s review of “No Other Land” for Ampersand, where she goes more into detail about the strength of this documentary.
The other films in this category are all strong. I’ve never quite seen a documentary like “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” and while I struggled to connect with its presentation as a viewer, I applaud the formal and editorial swings taken. “Black Box Diaries” stands out as a fascinating and devastating documentary, wherein director Shiori Itō investigates her own rape case at the hands of a fellow journalist and associate of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. “Porcelain War” will likely be the closest competitor to “No Other Land.” Though the Ukraine-centered documentary begins to lose coherence as it progresses, it holds a great many moments of immense beauty that earns its spot on this list.
Two films Netflix acquired after their Sundance premieres, I wish “Daughters” and “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” each found a way to break into this line-up. Both documentaries rank among the most emotionally affecting movies I watched from 2024, yet neither crossed the line into feeling overly manipulative. I greatly admire the construction of each.
My Preferential Ballot: “No Other Land,” “Black Box Diaries,” “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” “Sugarcane,” “Porcelain War”
Best International Feature Film
The Nominees: “Emilia Pérez” (France), “Flow” (Latvia), “The Girl with the Needle” (Denmark), “I’m Still Here” (Brazil), “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Germany)
Predicted Winner: “I’m Still Here” (Brazil)
Best International Feature marks the first time “Emilia Pérez” will come up in my reporting. Though I plan to discuss the film more in-depth across other categories, allow me to provide a brief take: it’s not very good.
In any other year, insisting that the 13-time nominee will lose Best International Feature to a three-category competitor would sound ludicrous. As the race drew on, however, “Emilia Pérez” found itself at the center of multiple controversies. This compounds with an already tough divide between industry reactions and audience/critic scores. Though recency bias certainly contributes, “Emilia Pérez” holds the distinction of having the lowest Letterboxd rating in the history of Best Picture nominees. “Emilia Pérez” clearly had strong support across Academy branches, and those are the opinions that matter — however, this accumulation of negative buzz will make it difficult to reward the movie as a whole rather than its individual pieces.
Perhaps my optimism clouds my judgement, but I predict that “I’m Still Here” (my favorite film in the line-up) will triumph in Best International Feature. Walter Salles’ emotional biographical film about the Paiva family’s tragedy under military dictatorship received broad support from its home country of Brazil. It quickly became the country’s highest-grossing film post-COVID. The inclusion of “I’m Still Here” in Best Picture on nomination morning came as the day’s biggest surprise — I never saw a single prediction that listed this movie among the 10 nominees.
Yet Salles (a USC alum) and his team fully earned their spot on this list. The director utilizes silence as a weapon throughout the film, sharply contrasting the joy felt in the Paiva household against the creeping dread that life will never completely return to normal. Fernanda Torres’ central performance lands among the best of the year. Looking at both the quality of “I’m Still Here” and the immense support behind it, I expect an upset on Oscar Sunday.
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” stands out as another phenomenal entry in this category. When the government of Iran threatened writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof with imprisonment following the secret creation of the film — which is highly critical of the Iranian government and its suppression of protests — Rasoulof and members of his cast/crew fled the country. Germany then selected the film as its representative in Best International Feature.
Germany made the right choice. As social protests begin to tear a family apart, the film quickly shifts tone from a grounded drama to an oppressive nightmare. The central quartet of actors sells both tones equally well, portraying a gradual erosion of family that mirrors societal dissolution. Rasoulof utilizes film as protest, and the end result deserves commendation.
I struggle the most to form a concrete opinion on “The Girl with the Needle.” Several of the film’s technical elements are superb, but I connect with it more from afar than in the moment. As my most recent watch on this list, I wonder how time will color my perception of this grim (and biographical) film.
My Preferential Ballot: “I’m Still Here,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” “Flow,” “The Girl with the Needle,” “Emilia Pérez”