Predicting the Oscars: Who Should, Could and Will Win at the 2025 Academy Awards

Two Succession brothers facing off in the same category. A musical crime melodrama making history, earning more nominations than any film not in the English language ever has. Brazil's second contender for Best Actress ever — the daughter of its first, in fact. A female filmmaker in the running for Best Director for only the tenth time in 97 years.

They're some of the big stories among the 2025 Oscar nominations, involving A Real Pain, The Apprentice, Emilia Pérez, I'm Still Here and The Substance. There's more where they came from — but which of those movies, and the talents involved, will earn shiny statuettes on Monday, March 3, Down Under time? And will Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Nickel Boys and Wicked have any luck, too?

Just like in 2022, 2023 and 2024, we've watched everything — many of which you can as well in Australia right now — and singled out who and what will likely be credited as an "Oscar-winner" moving forward. Surveying 11 categories, we've also named which nominees deserve to, and what else might be in with a chance.

Best Motion Picture

The nominees:

Anora
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
I'm Still Here
Nickel Boys
The Substance
Wicked

Should win: The Brutalist

Could win: Conclave

Will win: Anora

What a field. Worthy films will always miss the cut among the ten Best Picture nominees each and every year (Love Lies Bleeding, A Different Man, The Apprentice, I Saw the TV Glow, A Real Pain, Challengers, Babygirl, Hard Truths, All We Imagine as Light, Kneecap, La Chimera and Kinds of Kindness are just some absences in 2025), but the current batch nominees still showcase a staggering variety of movies. Sandy sci-fi blockbusters, hit musical adaptations, body-horror, papal thrillers, multiple features that show how stunning that filmmaking ambition and an unflinching vision can prove: they're all there.

Brady Corbet's The Brutalist is a towering achievement. It could repeat its Golden Globes glory at the Oscars. It should. But Anora won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, then top gongs from America's Directors Guild and Writers Guild, and is also a tremendous winner. Conclave emerging victorious wouldn't be a miracle, though, after its BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild wins.

Best Director

The nominees:

Anora, Sean Baker
The Brutalist, Brady Corbet
A Complete Unknown, James Mangold
Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard
The Substance, Coralie Fargeat

Should win: Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Could win: Sean Baker, Anora

Will win: Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

Some films feel like a force of nature — and like a vision ripped from a filmmaker's mind wholesale to dance and strut across the screen, too — and Coralie Fargeat's The Substance is one such movie. Jane Campion is the only woman to have been nominated for Best Director twice so far (for The Piano and The Power of the Dog), but this shouldn't prove the only nod in Fargeat's career.

Likely down to Brady Corbet and Sean Baker, where the field actually goes might depend on which of the pair's features win Best Picture — and if the Academy is in the mood to share the love or consolidate it. Awarding Corbet's achievement for a three-and-a-half-hour film that's had audiences glued to the screen, was made using a format in VistaVision that was favoured by Alfred Hitchcock on masterpieces such as North by Northwest and Vertigo, and brings back intermissions seems the most probable — and well-deserved — bet.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

The nominees:

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
Mikey Madison, Anora
Demi Moore, The Substance
Fernanda Torres, I'm Still Here

Should win: Demi Moore, The Substance

Could win: Mikey Madison, Anora

Will win: Demi Moore, The Substance

She's been giving stunning speeches around Hollywood, and Golden Globe- and Screen Actors Guild-winner Demi Moore best have another prepared. Rewarding her for a deeply committed performance more than four decades into her acting career, and after a significant time lacking substantial roles, also rewards The Substance's hefty and blatant fight against women being deemed past their prime when they hit a certain age.

If Mikey Madison repeats her BAFTA feat, the Anora star will join the top-ten youngest-ever Best Actress-winner's ranking, knocking Gone with the Wind's Vivien Leigh off the list. The film's final scene alone, in all of its emotional glory after Ani's rollercoaster ride, could nab her the accolade alone. Had Marianne Jean-Baptiste been nominated for Hard Truths, however, it'd be hard to see how anyone else could grasp the accolade.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

The nominees:

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Should win: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Could win: Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

Will win: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Will the youngest-ever winner of the Best Actor Oscar make history again 22 years later, joining the incredibly small list of two-time victors (only ten other performers have one this accolade twice or more)? Or will someone else not only grasp this year's prize, but also that spot as the gong's freshest-faced recipient? The Brutalist's Adrien Brody is the former. A Complete Unknown's Timothée Chalamet is the latter.

Neither of their movies would be the films that they are without either actor leading the charge. Intensity simmers in their respective performances alike. Either could take it — but Brody's portrayal wouldn't just be a once-in-a-lifetime piece of work for another actor; it'd be impossible. As for the rest of the field, in other years Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, Ralph Fiennes for Conclave and Sebastian Stan for The Apprentice (or for A Different Man, which he won the Golden Globe for) would be certain winners.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

The nominees:

Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
Ariana Grande, Wicked
Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Should win: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Could win: Isabella Rossellini, Conclave

Will win: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Emilia Pérez will always be the first non-English-language film to receive 13 Oscar nominations, but its chances of scoring a big bag of trophies have dwindled courtesy of lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón's awful past tweets. As a result, the excellent Zoe Saldaña, portraying the eponymous character's conflicted lawyer, might end up being the movie's only winner — and hers is a powerhouse performance.

Or, Emilia Pérez mightn't even be a lock here, despite Saldaña winning the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Award in the lead up. Isabella Rossellini is exceptional in Conclave as Sister Agnes, the nun that's also the Head Caterer for the bickering cardinals — and it'd recognise her for her entire career, and redress the fact that she wasn't nominated for David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Ingrid Bergman, her mother, won three, including in this category in 1974 for Murder on the Orient Express.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

The nominees:

Yura Borisov, Anora
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Should win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Could win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Will win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

There's no bad picks in the Best Supporting Actor field. There's the vulnerable yet irreverent portrayal that's clearly going to win — the recipient of accolades at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs,  Screen Actors Guild Awards and Film Independent Spirit Awards as well — and there's also the spur-of-the-moment speech that everyone will get to enjoy when Kieran Culkin does, but each one of the five nominated performances is outstanding, including from first-time Australian nominee Guy Pearce for The Brutalist.

Jeremy Strong is on another level even for him in The Apprentice. The lifelong Oscar fan will win one of the coveted awards before his career out. He knows what it's like to lose out to Culkin, though, and not just on-screen in Succession — the only time that they were both nominated for the Best Actor in a Drama Emmy in the same year, Culkin won (beating Roy family patriarch Brian Cox, too).

Best Original Screenplay

The nominees:

Anora, Sean Baker
The Brutalist, Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg
September 5, Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum and Alex David
The Substance, Coralie Fargeat

Should win: A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg

Could win: The Brutalist, Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold

Will win: A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg

Sean Baker took out this category for Anora at the Writers Guild Awards, where Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold weren't nominated for The Brutalist. But at the Oscars, A Real Pain should go home a winner in every field — two in total — that it's up for. The Academy does have a history of pairing the winner of Best Original Screenplay with Best Supporting Actor, including with Django Unchained and Green Book.

As a performer, Jesse Eisenberg has only been in the running for an Oscar once, in 2011 for Best Actor for The Social Network — and in a different year, he could've been nominated for starring in A Real Pain as well. His script for the film makes the personal universal, and understands existential angst and anxiety, and how it manifests in different manners, with both intensity and humour. That said, this could also be where Coralie Fargeat gets some love for The Substance.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The nominees:

A Complete Unknown, James Mangold and Jay Cocks
Conclave, Peter Straughan
Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi
Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes
Sing Sing, Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin and John 'Divine G' Whitfield

Should win: Sing Sing, Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin and John 'Divine G' Whitfield

Could win: Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes

Will win: Conclave, Peter Straughan

The possibility that either or both of Nickel Boys or Sing Sing could go home empty-handed from this year's Oscars is a travesty. Each 2025 releases in Australia, where the former sadly didn't get the big-screen date that it deserves, they're already among the year's best for viewers Down Under. Both possess screenplays of deep feeling — one adapting a Pulitzer Prize-winner, the other drawing from a helluva slice of real life.

Nickel Boys emerged victorious at the Writers Guild Awards, but over A Complete Unknown, plus three films not in the running here: Dune: Part Two, Hit Man and Wicked. Here, this looks like Conclave's guaranteed time to shine, and the Vatican City-set script based on Robert Harris' novel about electing a new pope after the sudden death of the last one — and what the manoeuvring around it says about faith — is indeed a gem.

Best International Feature

The nominees:

I'm Still Here
The Girl with the Needle
Emilia Pérez
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Flow

Should win: The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Could win: The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Will win: I'm Still Here

Once a near lock for Emilia Pérez, Best International Feature now has fellow multiple-nominee — and fellow Best Picture and Best Actress contender — I'm Still Here in its sights. Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles has notched up two nods in this category over his career, and winning for his Fernanda Torres-led account of love, loss and holding onto life under the shadow of a dictatorship would be an extra-nice feat given he was last in contention for Central Station starring Torres' mother Fernanda Montenegro.

Dialogue-free animated marvel Flow deserves to win every award that it's nominated for, so this and Best Animated Feature, but The Seed of the Sacred Fig is as powerful as filmmaking gets — with Mohammad Rasoulof (There Is No Evil) fighting on- and off-screen against the regime that's long tried to silence his voice.

Best Animated Feature

The nominees:

Flow
Inside Out 2
Memoir of a Snail
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The Wild Robot

Should win: Flow

Could win: The Wild Robot

Will win: Flow

Flow's title couldn't be more perfect. To watch Latvia's first-ever film to be nominated for an Oscar is to swirl, surge and sweep along with the gorgeous dialogue-free feature, and with the animals — a cat, some dogs, birds, a capybara, a lemur and more — that are trying to survive, and learn how to heal together, when a flood gushes in. It's astonishing.

The Wild Robot doesn't scrap chatter, but it too is heartfelt and wondrous as it watches animals carve out an existence — here, with the sudden arrival of a robot (voiced wonderfully by Lupita Nyong'o) disrupting the usual status quo, and also redefining what makes a family. Australian claymation Memoir of a Snail would easily win in many previous years, deservedly so. For big-name animation studios Pixar and Aardman, it doesn't look likely that Inside Out 2 and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl will back up Inside Out and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit's past Oscars.

Best Documentary Feature

The nominees:

Black Box Diaries
No Other Land
Porcelain War
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
Sugarcane

Should win: Black Box Diaries

Could win: Porcelain War

Will win: No Other Land

Fury or hope? What takes home 2025's Best Documentary Feature prize might come down to how voters want to feel. There's no escaping anger while watching No Other Land or Black Box Diaries, both deeply personal docos featuring their filmmakers and telling their stories — one about the Israeli campaign of displacement in the West Bank region of Masafer Yatta, the other about a Japanese sexual-assault survivor taking on the system that won't punish her attacker. In Sugarcane, too, digging into the abuse experienced at a Catholic Church-run mission school isn't just a job for Julian Brave NoiseCat, nor an outrage-free watch for audiences.

Porcelain War heads to Ukraine, as 2024's victor 20 Days in Mariupol did — but there's more optimism in its heroing the power of art, even in small acts, amid the fight. It's also among Australia's Oscar hopes for 2025, as an Aussie co-production.

The winners of the 2025 Oscars will be announced on Monday, March 3, Australian time. For further details, head to the awards' website. 

Wondering where to watch this year's Oscar contenders? We've put together a rundown for Australia.