It takes an army to make a film — but directors and screenwriters can legitimately claim to be the key authors. Screen spotlights this year’s top Oscar and Bafta contenders in the director and original and adapted screenplay categories.
Hollywood’s dual strikes have impacted the entertainment business, and their effect on the awards season has been considerable. While US writers and actors were barred from working and promoting films, the directors became the early faces of awards campaigns. Christopher Nolan was out and about touting his magnum opus Oppenheimer, Greta Gerwig talked up Barbie and Martin Scorsese gave interviews for Killers Of The Flower Moon.
Now the strikes are over and writers and on-screen talent have flooded back to the publicity circuit, directors can take a little breather — although they will still figure prominently in campaigning.
A high-pedigree season that is shaping up to be fairly open brings former nominees such as Alexander Payne and returning talent like Jonathan Glazer to the fray. They are joined by Palme d’Or winner Justine Triet and fast-rising new feature talents Cord Jefferson (American Fiction) and screenwriter Samy Burch (May December).
Last season, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert were named best directors at the Academy Awards for Everything Everywhere All At Once and also claimed the original screenplay award, while Sarah Polley won best adapted screenplay for Women Talking.
At the Bafta Film Awards, Edward Berger won best director for All Quiet On The Western Front and shared adapted screenplay honours with his co-writers Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell. Martin McDonagh took the original screenplay award for The Banshees Of Inisherin.
Director
The New York Film Critics Circle anointed Christopher Nolan best director for Oppenheimer, a cerebral and visually arresting account of the creation of the atom bomb, starring Cillian Murphy as J Robert Oppenheimer. Universal’s drama earned $950m worldwide and is arguably the most remarkable tentpole success of the year, given its three-hour run time and sober subject matter.
Nolan’s films have generated multiple Oscar and Bafta wins — but he himself has never won at either. He has five nominations apiece at both sets of awards, variously for writing, directing and producing for films including Inception and Dunkirk. He has been hard at work on the campaign trail, bringing his trademark eloquence and insight in support of Oppenheimer. There will be plenty of goodwill among industry and voters.
Barbie filmmaker Greta Gerwig is enjoying a spectacular year after her film became the highest-grossing release of 2023 through Warner Bros on $1.4bn worldwide, the studio’s biggest ever hit and the highest-grossing live-action film directed by a woman. The female empowerment story about Barbie’s existential crisis is based on the Mattel toy, and stars and is produced by Margot Robbie. Previously an indie darling, Gerwig has a total of five nominations combined across Oscar and Bafta — four for writing, plus directing with Lady Bird.
Martin Scorsese has put in a major shift supporting Killers Of The Flower Moon, starting at the world premiere in Cannes. The dark true-crime epic depicts the multiple murders of members of the oil-rich Osage Nation by white men in 1920s America. Scorsese has 14 Oscar nominations — of which nine are for directing, winning once with The Departed in 2007. It is a similar nominations scenario with Bafta — and he scored best film, director and adapted screenplay (with co-writer Nicholas Pileggi) wins for GoodFellas in 1991.
Scorsese’s Apple-backed new feature received an honorary Gotham Award in late November, and was named best film by the New York Film Critics. It opened via Paramount in October and has grossed more than $150m worldwide at press time.
Greece-born auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, whose latest slice of singular storytelling Poor Things won the Venice Golden Lion and opened in North America via Searchlight Pictures on December 8, will be one to watch. He reunites with Emma Stone, star of his 2018 period treat The Favourite, in the visually sumptuous feminist parable Poor Things; she plays Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back from the dead who rapidly re-educates herself about the world she departed. Lanthimos has a total of seven nominations combined across Oscar and Bafta for The Lobster and The Favourite, winning the outstanding British film Bafta for the latter.
In a year of daring visions, add the name Jonathan Glazer to the list of heavyweight contenders. His exploration of the banality of evil, The Zone Of Interest, is the fourth feature in the Briton’s career and the first in a decade. Based on Martin Amis’s book, the Holocaust story was the talk of Cannes for its domestic portrait of real-life Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, who live next to the concentration camp. Glazer picked up best British film Bafta nods for Under The Skin in 2015 and Sexy Beast in 2001, and was named best director this year by the Los Angeles film critics, who selected Lanthimos for second place.
Academy favourite Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is one of his most acclaimed films in years. Paul Giamatti, from Payne’s beloved 2004 hit Sideways, stars as a cranky prep school teacher who bonds with a provocative student in the 1970-set comedy drama. Payne is seeking his fourth Oscar directing nod after Nebraska (2014 awards), The Descendants (2012 awards) and Sideways, and his first Bafta directing nomination.
Feature debutant Cord Jefferson, a writer on small-screen hits Watchmen and Station Eleven, is an exciting new voice after wowing critics with his satirical tale American Fiction, starring Jeffrey Wright as a disillusioned Black author who unwittingly becomes a publishing sensation. The film won Toronto International Film Festival’s people’s choice award, often a harbinger of Oscar nominations.
After missing out on a directing Oscar nod for his feature directing debut A Star Is Born in 2019 (despite nine Oscar nominations so far for acting, producing and writing), Bradley Cooper will be vying for honours with Netflix’s Maestro, starring as the composer Leonard Bernstein opposite Carey Mulligan as his wife Felicia Montealegre. Cooper is Golden Globe-nominated for best director alongside Nolan, Gerwig, Scorsese and Celine Song for Past Lives.
Independent filmmaker Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Nest) has impressed with early screenings of his true-life wrestling clan drama The Iron Claw from A24, starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White and Harris Dickinson. He has never been nominated for a directing Oscar or Bafta.
Original screenplay
The postponement of the Writers Guild Awards amid the strikes to April 14, 2024 — one month after the Oscars on March 10 — removes a major bellwether heading into the Oscar and Bafta nominations. Several films currently being pushed in the original screenplay category are based on actual events, characters or properties such as Barbie, Origin, May December, Rustin, Maestro and The Iron Claw, which could be to the advantage of pure works of fiction like Past Lives, Asteroid City, Anatomy Of A Fall and The Holdovers. Awards pundits have questioned whether some will get switched to the adapted category (see below) — but as things stand, this is a rich field.
The formidable professional and personal partnership of Greta Gerwig and partner Noah Baumbach co-wrote Barbie, and while the Writers Guild of America has declared this an original screenplay and Warner Bros has said it will submit for the category, insiders are watching to see if the studio switches to adapted. The blockbuster has delighted and provoked in equal measure, earning plenty of fans among voters.
Gerwig was nominated for Oscars and Baftas in adapted screenplay for Little Women in 2020 and original screenplay for Lady Bird in 2018. Baumbach garnered Oscar and Bafta original screenplay nods for Marriage Story in 2020 and an Oscar nomination for The Squid And The Whale in 2006.
David Hemingson will be one to watch for The Holdovers, his debut feature screenplay. Having hitherto plied his trade as a TV writer and producer on shows such as Kitchen Confidential and How I Met Your Mother, he could win major film awards at his first attempt with his witty and poignant story — he has already been nominated for best screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Fellow Indie Spirit nominee Celine Song broke out with her widely admired Sundance premiere and debut feature Past Lives, which also played Berlin. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo star in the deeply affecting story of lost love, which will be a contender across a number of categories.
Emerald Fennell is back with Saltburn after winning the original screenplay Oscar and Bafta for Promising Young Woman in 2021. Her new tale of an Oxford student who infiltrates the world of an aristocratic family premiered in Telluride and has won admirers for its sharp script and wicked characters.
Wes Anderson films reliably garner awards kudos, and his Cannes premiere Asteroid City — co-written with Roman Coppola — charmed critics with the story of a grieving father who takes his family to a junior stargazing competition. Anderson has three original screenplay Oscar nominations, shared with Owen Wilson (The Royal Tenenbaums), Coppola (Moonrise Kingdom) and Hugo Guinness (The Grand Budapest Hotel).
French filmmakers Justine Triet and Anatomy Of A Fall co-writer Arthur Harari have wowed with their expertly crafted drama about a woman (Sandra Hüller) accused of murdering her husband, and Neon is pushing the film in multiple categories. The pair previously collaborated on the 2019 Cannes Competition drama Sibyl.
Feature debutant Samy Burch is in contention for her screenplay to Todd Haynes’ psychodrama May December. Netflix pounced after the Cannes premiere, and the film is a layered tale of a famous actress who embeds with the subject of her next role — a woman caught up in a scandal decades earlier (loosely inspired by the life of convicted sex offender Mary Kay Letourneau). Burch received an Independent Spirit Awards nomination for best first screenplay.
Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, co‑written with 2016 original screenplay Oscar winner Josh Singer (Spotlight), combines rapid-fire dialogue with a passionate story spanning decades and has won many admirers. Cooper earned 2019 adapted screenplay Oscar and Bafta nods for A Star Is Born.
Adapted screenplay
Among the directors mentioned, several are also in contention for adapted screenplay, including American Fiction’s Cord Jefferson (a double Independent Spirit Awards nominee for best feature and screenplay) adapting from Percival Everett’s book Erasure, and Jonathan Glazer, who adapted Martin Amis’s The Zone Of Interest. Joining them are heavyweights Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese who both tackled prestigious non-fiction tomes, the latter partnering with Eric Roth.
Working from Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin’s American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy Of J Robert Oppenheimer, Nolan is gunning for his first adapted screenplay nod after original screenplay Oscar and Bafta nominations for Inception in 2011 and an Oscar nod for Memento in 2002.
Scorsese and Roth adapted David Grann’s Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI, and the resulting script — weaving together multiple characters and a timely sense of moral outrage — could prove hard to resist. Scorsese and Roth have multiple Oscar and Bafta nominations for their screenwriting, with Roth winning the Oscar for Forrest Gump in 1995.
Tony McNamara’s Poor Things screenplay is based on the book by Alasdair Gray and has won plaudits for its sensual Frankenstein story laced with feminist sensibility and embedded within a steampunk milieu. The Australian received Oscar and Bafta original screenplay nods for The Favourite in 2019. The Golden Globes combines original and adapted into a single screenplay category, and this year nominated adaptations Poor Things, Oppenheimer and Killers Of The Flower Moon, alongside original works Anatomy Of A Fall, Barbie and Past Lives.
Independent Spirit-nominated for best director, Andrew Haigh’s All Of Us Strangers premiered in Telluride and confirms the British filmmaker of 45 Years and Weekend as someone of rare talent. The Searchlight Pictures-backed gay romance starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal is freely adapted from Taichi Yamada’s book Strangers, and bleeds into fantasy as a lonely Londoner ponders love and loss. The Los Angeles critics were enthused, naming All Of Us Strangers best screenplay, with Samy Burch’s May December in second place.
Sofia Coppola won the original screenplay Oscar and was nominated by Bafta for Lost In Translation in 2004. Her latest film, A24’s Venice premiere Priscilla starring Volpi Cup winner Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla Presley, is based on the subject’s memoir Elvis And Me and offers a textured account of the young woman’s love affair with Elvis Presley.
The Color Purple from writer Marcus Gardley (Foundation) is based on Alice Walker’s novel of the same name and the stage musical by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, Stephen Bray and Marsha Norman. The story of a young Black woman’s triumphant journey in the early decades of the 20th century will open in the US through Warner Bros on December 25.
Also in contention
Director
- Blitz Bazawule, The Color Purple
- Sofia Coppola, Priscilla
- Ava DuVernay, Origin
- Emerald Fennell, Saltburn
- David Fincher, The Killer
- Andrew Haigh, All Of Us Strangers
- Todd Haynes, May December
- Michael Mann, Ferrari
- Ridley Scott, Napoleon
- Celine Song, Past Lives
- Justine Triet, Anatomy Of A Fall
Original screenplay
- Kristoffer Borgli, Dream Scenario
- Julian Breece, Dustin Lance Black, Rustin
- Ilker Catak, Johannes Duncker, The Teachers’ Lounge
- Alex Convery, Air
- Chloe Domont, Fair Play
- Sean Durkin, The Iron Claw
Adapted screenplay
- JA Bayona, Society Of The Snow
- Kelly Fremon Craig, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
- Tran Anh Hung, The Taste Of Things
- Troy Kennedy Martin, Ferrari
- Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse.
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