Overview
If a cinema date was on your agenda in the later months of 2024 or has been since 2025 began, then you might've seen an Oscar-nominee. When it comes to accolade-worthy flicks hitting screens, the films celebrated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences usually release closer to awards season and during it — and, in Australia, even once the year's official Oscar contenders have been named.
Dune: Part Two, the first of duelling Timothée Chalamet movies vying for glory, is an exception among 2025's Academy-anointed picks, as audiences have had over a year to catch up with the spicy sci-fi sequel. A Complete Unknown, with Timmy as Bob Dylan, demonstrates the normal trend perfectly, though — and you'll need to get cosy in your local cinema right now to enjoy it.
They're just two of 2025's Oscar-contending features and documentaries that Australians can enjoy this very instant. In total, if you're eager to give nominated flicks the Pokémon catch-them-all approach, there's 33 currently available in the lead up to Hollywood's night of nights. Ahead of the winners being revealed on Monday, March 3, here's where to see them. Watching epic dramas on big screen, diving into powerful and haunting docos at home, deciding whether to defy gravity in a crowd or on your own couch: they're all options.
On the Big Screen:
A Complete Unknown
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (James Mangold), Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet), Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Best Supporting Actress (Monica Barbaro), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design
Our thoughts: This Timothée Chalamet (Dune: Part Two) passion project took more than half a decade to come to fruition. With its 60s setting, focusing on the period from Bob Dylan's arrival in New York City to going electric at the Newport Folk Festival, a sense of time is always visible A Complete Unknown; however, that also applies to the years that its star has had to perfect his lead part. Benefiting from such a hefty preparation block, this is as committed a performance as Chalamet has given — and one that director James Mangold (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) always lets shine as the film explores an icon's talents, ambitions and quest to remain himself.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.
Read our interviews with Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, James Mangold and Boyd Holbrook.
The Brutalist
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Brady Corbet), Best Actor (Adrien Brody), Best Supporting Actor (Guy Pearce), Best Supporting Actress (Felicity Jones), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design
Our thoughts: Since switching from acting to writing and directing, Brady Corbet hasn't lacked in ambition for a second — but as excellent as both Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux are, his third feature towers above them. With Adrien Brody (Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty) as Hungarian Jewish architect László Toth, The Brutalist is as epic as a three-and-a-half-hour drama about trying to escape life's horrors, including those of the Holocaust, by chasing the American dream can be. The buildings designed by its protagonist aren't the only things that are monumental here, career-best turns by Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones among them.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.
Read our interview with Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones and Brady Corbet.
Emilia Pérez
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Jacques Audiard), Best Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón), Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña), Best International Feature Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Original Song — 'Mi Camino' by Camille and Clément Ducol, Best Original Song — 'El Mal' by Clément Ducol, Camille and Jacques Audiard
Our thoughts: As it follows its namesake character's (Karla Sofía Gascón, Harina) journey from cartel leader to trying to live her authentic life, Emilia Pérez isn't just a musical and a crime drama rolled into one. It's also a melodrama — and French filmmaker Jacques Audiard (Paris, 13th District) goes bold in leaning in, and in embracing the juxtapositions of the movie's three main genres as they jostle against each other. That audacity, that willingness to be both spectacular and messy, and the feature's three key performances, including from Zoe Saldaña (Special Ops: Lioness) and Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building): they all assist in making this vivid viewing.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.
I'm Still Here
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress (Fernanda Torres), Best International Feature Film
Our thoughts: It came as no surprise when Fernanda Torres (Fim) won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Eunice Paiva in Walter Salles' (On the Road) deeply moving political and personal drama. Her understated yet also expressive performance as the real-life wife of Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello, Bury Your Dead), who was taken away by Brazil's military dictatorship in 1971 and never seen again, is that powerful. I'm Still Here poignantly charts the task of trying to endure under such heartbreaking circumstances — under oppressive rule, when your existence crumbles, when your family is fraying courtesy of the trauma and when fighting back is the only choice, too.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.
Maria
Nominations: Best Cinematography
Our thoughts: Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín (El Conde). Pivotal women from the 20th century. Phenomenal actors giving their utmost to their parts. That's proven a winning combination three times now, with Maria following Jackie and Spencer. Unlike Natalie Portman (Lady in the Lake) as Jacqueline Kennedy and Kristen Stewart (Love Lies Bleeding) as Princess Diana, Angelina Jolie (Eternals) mightn't have earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination, but she's captivating in every second — in diva mode, but also both soulful and yearning — as opera singer Maria Callas, as the exquisitely shot film (by El Conde's Edward Lachman) charts the week before her death in 1977.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Nominations: Best International Feature Film
Our thoughts: Making movies isn't easy; however, there's regular challenges and there's the situation that Mohammad Rasoulof faces. For his art, for documenting the reality of life in Iran today and for showing it to the world, prison sentences and filmmaking bans have come his way. The Seed of the Sacred Fig isn't pivotal viewing just because of what it took to create — in secret, with Rasoulof directing remotely — and how its guiding force is treated by the Iranian regime, though. Observing how a family unravels when an investigating judge's wife and daughters push back amid the country's 2022–23 protests, this is another statement of film from the There Is No Evil helmer.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.
September 5
Nominations: Best Original Screenplay
Our thoughts: Before First Cow, Past Lives, The Agency and plenty more, among John Magaro's first on-screen jobs was playing an extra in Munich. Two decades later, he turns in one of September 5's many compelling performances (see also: Presumed Innocent's Peter Sarsgaard, Mrs Davis' Ben Chaplin and The Teachers' Lounge's Leonie Benesch) in another potent drama about the terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics. Filmmaker Tim Fehlbaum (The Colony) views this chapter of history through the efforts of the ABC Sports crew, whose coverage pivoted and made history — and his tense procedural journalism thriller is both stirring and gripping.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.
Sing Sing
Nominations: Best Actor (Colman Domingo), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song — 'Like a Bird' by Abraham Alexander and Adrian Quesada
Our thoughts: In the maximum-security prison that gives Greg Kwedar's (Transpecos) affecting and inspiring second feature its title, the aim of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program is right there in its own moniker. For the real-life scheme to inspire a new cinema masterpiece, an on-screen masterclass in empathy and a tribute to being moved by art, surely wasn't an initial goal. As Divine G, one of the incarcerated man finding purpose through staging theatre productions with his fellow inmates, Colman Domingo (The Madness) is astonishing — as is Clarence Maclin, a former detainee at the NYC facility who plays himself as the movie mixes actors with amateurs.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.
In Cinemas or at Home:
Anora
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Sean Baker), Best Actress (Mikey Madison), Best Supporting Actor (Yura Borisov), Best Original Screenplay
Our thoughts: Along with playfulness, empathy, and an eagerness to look beyond the usual characters and pockets of America that tend to grace narrative cinema, tenderness is one Sean Baker's special skills, as splashed across his filmography. It's in Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket, and now Anora. Spotting Cinderella elements and riffs on Pretty Woman aren't hard with this movie about a Brooklyn erotic dancer (Mikey Madison, Lady in the Lake) who liaises with and is soon wed to the son (Mark Eydelshteyn, Zhar-ptitsa) of a Russian oligarch (Aleksey Serebryakov, Lotereya) — but just as Ani is always her own person, the magnificent Anora is always a Baker film.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Apple TV and Prime Video.
A Real Pain
Nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Kieran Culkin), Best Original Screenplay
Our thoughts: He didn't feature on-screen in his first film as a writer/director, but 2022's When You Finish Saving the World couldn't have sprung from anyone but Jesse Eisenberg. Neither could've 2024's A Real Pain. Both explore the fact that experiencing our own pain, big or small, world-shattering or seemingly trivial, or personal or existential, is never a minor matter. In the latter, the Fleishman Is in Trouble actor plays the anxious part, and literally. His character is a bundle of nerves about and during his pilgrimage to Poland with his cousin (Kieran Culkin, Succession) to honour of their grandmother, who survived the Second World War, then started a new life in the US.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Disney+, Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our full review and our interview with Jesse Eisenberg.
Better Man
Nominations: Best Visual Effects
Our thoughts: Most music biopics want the figure in its spotlight to remain front and centre. Better Man doesn't stray from the formula there. The bulk of films in the genre also want audiences to always recognise the star in focus, which is where this Australian-made look at Robbie Williams' career makes a huge departure. It's the spirit of the former Take That member that shines through in Jonno Davies' motion-capture performance, as Williams is rendered on-screen as a chimpanzee. For The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey, it works, so much so that it's now impossible to imagine a feature about the singer done any other way. Let me entertain you indeed.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our interview with Jonno Davies and Michael Gracey.
Conclave
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best Supporting Actress (Isabella Rossellini), Best Adapted screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design
Our thoughts: Cardinals, they're just like everyone else seeking power — bickering, gossiping, scheming, fighting and trying to find their way to the top by any means possible, that is. Aided by a stellar cast (including The Return's Ralph Fiennes, Citadel's Stanley Tucci, The Old Man's John Lithgow and Spaceman's Isabella Rossellini) answering viewers' prayers, filmmaker Edward Berger swaps World War I's horrors in All Quiet on the Western Front for a pulpy and twisty but smart page-to-screen papal thriller about electing a new pope. He hasn't completely switched thematically, though: how tradition and modernity butt against each other also remains the director's focus.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Apple TV and Prime Video.
Gladiator II
Nominations: Best Costume Design
Our thoughts: Swords, sandals, spectacle, scale, sharks in more ways than one — including literally — and Denzel Washington (The Equalizer 3) having a scenery-chewing ball: welcome to Ridley Scott's 24-years-later follow-up to Gladiator. Helming his fourth feature of the 2020s after The Last Duel, House of Gucci and Napoleon, the veteran filmmaker has taken the sequel-as-remake approach with Gladiator II, but sports the style and stars to largely pull it off, with Paul Mescal (All of Us Strangers), Pedro Pascal (The Wild Robot), Connie Nielsen (Origin), Fred Hechinger (Kraven the Hunter) and Joseph Quinn (A Quiet Place: Day One) also great among the latter.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our interview with Paul Mescal, Connie Nielsen and Fred Hechinger.
Nosferatu
Nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design
Our thoughts: The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman filmmaker Robert Eggers turned Nosferatu into a play as a teen. Consider his big-screen remake of FW Murnau's 1922 classic a second bite, then. His fastidious fixation with detail and recreating past eras with painstaking precision is on full and glorious display, as is his way with unnerving eerieness. As Count Orlok in a tale that began as an unauthorised Dracula adaptation a century ago, Bill Skarsgård (Boy Kills World) is commanding, while Renfield's Nicholas Hoult and Shadow of the Vampire's Willem Dafoe make welcome bloodsucker returns, but it's Lily-Rose Depp (The Idol) who truly haunts.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our interview with Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Robert Eggers.
Wicked
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress (Cynthia Erivo), Best Supporting Actress (Ariana Grande), Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects
Our thoughts: As a theatre-kid obsession for decades, it was long likely that the big-screen adaptation of Wicked — a movie based on a musical springing from a book that offered a prequel to a film that walked the celluloid road 85 years prior, itself jumping from the page to the screen — would have big theatre-kid energy as it attempted to ensure that its magic enchants across mediums. No one would ever want a muted version, after all. It was true of his take on In the Heights and it's accurate again here: Jon M Chu has a knack as a filmmaker of stage hits reaching cinemas, matching the vibe of the show that he's taking on expertly.
Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our full review and our interview with Nathan Crowley.
Via Streaming:
A Different Man
Nominations: Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Our thoughts: 2024 was the year that Sebastian Stan (Dumb Money) played men chasing a dream that turns out to be a nightmare — and that musing on what it takes to accept yourself and ignore the world's feedback, and whether external change can bring about an internal transformation, was gripping movie viewing more than once. Hailing from writer/director Aaron Schimberg (Chained for Life), A Different Man is an exceptional example of both. When Stan's Edward Lemuel undertakes an experimental treatment for neurofibromatosis, his disfigurement disappears; however, his hopes for stardom and love can't be grasped that easily.
Where to watch: Via Binge, Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our full review.
Alien: Romulus
Nominations: Best Visual Effects
Our thoughts: Don't trust your employer. While that isn't the sole takeaway message from 45 years of Alien movies, it's a biting aspect of the sci-fi/horror saga nonetheless. In space, Weylan-Yutani Corp workers keep screaming and the company doesn't simply refuse to hear them; in the battle between killer extra-terrestrial creatures and the outfit's employees, it puts the former first. Under Fede Álvarez's (The Girl in the Spider's Web) direction, watching how that plays out in Alien: Romulus for Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny, Civil War), the latest to glean that she doesn't mean anything beyond labour to the source of her paycheque, isn't quite the perfect organism — but it's engaging.
Where to watch: Via Disney+, Apple TV and Prime Video.
The Apprentice
Nominations: Best Actor (Sebastian Stan), Best Supporting Actor (Jeremy Strong)
Our thoughts: The Apprentice was always going to be a horror movie. The world already knows its subject, and is familiar with where his path has taken him since the 70s- and 80s-era chapters of his life that are covered by Ali Abbasi's (Holy Spider) compelling film. Sebastian Stan (Dumb Money) and Jeremy Strong (in his first post-Succession role) proving phenomenal in a movie that's unshakeable: that too feels inevitable. The fact that this is a Frankenstein's monster story, too, was perhaps less expected — but by focusing on Donald Trump's (Stan) mentorship by New York City attorney and political fixer Roy Cohn (Strong) when the former was an aspiring real-estate tycoon, it fits.
Where to watch: Via Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our interview with Ali Abbasi.
Black Box Diaries
Nominations: Best Documentary Feature
Our thoughts: It's easy to wish for a world where Black Box Diaries didn't need to exist — where its director and subject, journalist Shiori Itō, wasn't sexually assaulted, then forced to investigate the attack herself because the Japanese police declined to pursue the high-profile culprit. The reality, though, is that in a country where only four percent of sexual assaults end up going through the justice system, many women are in the same situation, even if they can't and/or don't pick up a camera. Itō knows that fact as she courageously shares her story, and attempts to ensure that what she went through isn't buried. Filled with vulnerability and determination, this is devastating viewing.
Where to watch: Via DocPlay.
Dune: Part Two
Nominations: Best Picture, Best, Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects
Our thoughts: Revenge is a dish best served sandy in Dune: Part Two. On the desert planet of Arrakis, where golden hills as far as the eye can see are shaped from the most-coveted and -psychedelic substance in author Frank Herbert's estimation, there's no other way. Vengeance is just one course on Paul Atreides' (Timothée Chalamet, Wonka) menu, however. Pop culture's supreme spice boy, heir to the stewardship of his adopted realm, has a prophecy to fulfil whether he likes it or not; propaganda to navigate, especially about him being the messiah; and an Indigenous population, the Fremen, to prove himself to. So mines Denis Villeneuve's soaring sequel to 2021's Dune.
Where to watch: Via Netflix, Binge, Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our full review and our interview with Greig Fraser.
Elton John: Never Too Late
Nominations: Best Original Song — 'Never Too Late' by Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt and Bernie Taupin
Our thoughts: It started in 2018. It finished in 2023. Across that five-year period, it came to Australia twice. Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, his final string of live shows around the world, saw him say goodbye to hitting the stage after five decades — a decision that documentary Elton John: Never Too Late digs into. This is a celebratory film rather than a deep dive, and somehow not as intimate as viewers should expect of a movie co-directed by the music icon's husband David Furnish (who also helmed 1997's Elton John: Tantrums & Tiaras, and works with Martha and Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry filmmaker RJ Cutler hear), but the music is still a treat.
Where to watch: Via Disney+.
Inside Out 2
Nominations: Best Animated Feature Film
Our thoughts: They're basic: joy, sadness, fear, disgust and anger, that is, the five emotions that swirled inside human heads in Pixar's 2015 hit Inside Out. In Inside Out 2, that quintet of feelings isn't enough to cope with being a teenager, which is where anxiety, envy, ennui and embarrassment come in. The newcomers arrive with the onset of puberty. They have no time for simple happiness; they've levelled up some of the emotions adjacent to sorrow, fright, dismay and fury, too. Inside Out was always an all-ages ode to mindfulness, as is its sequel — and discovering how to accept and acknowledge apprehension, unease and nerves is here, like in life, a complicated balancing act.
Where to watch: Via Disney+, Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our full review.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Nominations: Best Visual Effects
Our thoughts: Since day one, every Planet of the Apes tale has been a mirror. Gazing into the sci-fi series means seeing the power structures and societal struggles of our reality staring back — discrimination, authoritarianism and even the impact of a world-ravaging virus should ring a bell — but with humans no longer atop the pecking order. These are allegorical stories and, at their best, thoughtful ones, probing the responsibilities of being the planet's dominant force and the ramifications of taking that mantle for granted. Not every instalment has handled the task as well as it should've, but those, that do like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, leave a paw print.
Where to watch: Via Disney+, Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our full review.
Memoir of a Snail
Nominations: Best Animated Feature Film
Our thoughts: Fifteen years is a long time between features. Films by Australian stop-motion animator Adam Elliot — movies that he calls "clayographies" — also aren't quick to make. But Memoir of a Snail rewards the wait, with the Mary and Max writer/director again using his preferred medium to process life's heartbreaks, struggles, joys and delights in stunning fashion. Sarah Snook (Succession) voices Grace Pudel, twin to Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee, Disclaimer) and later friend to the elderly Pinky (Jacki Weaver, Hello Tomorrow!). Grace reflects upon her existence from childhood onwards, and her journey towards living for herself, to share this immensely affecting story.
Where to watch: Via Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our interview with Adam Elliot.
Nickel Boys
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay
Our thoughts: Cinema's function as an empathy machine places viewers into someone else's shoes for 90 or so minutes at a time. Adapting Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, director RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening) doesn't leave that sensation to chance in this impressionistic standout. As shot by Jomo Fray (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt), Nickel Boys' extraordinary cinematography adopts a first-person perspective, ensuring that the audience sees and hears the world as Elwood (Ethan Herisse, The American Society of Magical Negroes) and Turner (Brandon Wilson, Murmur) do when they're sent to an abusive reform school.
Where to watch: Via Prime Video.
No Other Land
Nominations: Best Documentary Feature
Our thoughts: In No Other Land, Basel Adra films what he knows but wishes that he doesn't — and what he knows that the world needs to see. Co-directing with Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham, plus farmer and photographer Hamdan Ballal and cinematographer Rachel Szor, the Palestinian activist chronicles the takeover of the West Bank region of Masafer Yatta for an Israeli military base. As a result, families with centuries of ties to the land are forced to live in caves, battle soldiers and fight to survive. Making this documentary is an act of bravery of the highest order. Watching it, and bearing witness as Adra demands, couldn't be more essential.
Where to watch: Via DocPlay.
Porcelain War
Nominations: Best Documentary Feature
Our thoughts: Art can be a radical act — a fight, a show of defiance, a countering to oppression and devastation — and this truth can be baked into a documentary's very existence (see: Black Box Diaries and No Other Land for just two recent examples). The moving and powerful Porcelain War also shows this idea in action in Ukraine, against the backdrop of its devastated landscape under the current Russian occupation. In this Sundance 2024 US Documentary Grand Jury Prize-winner, filmmakers Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev capture the latter's efforts with Anya Stasenko to craft porcelain figurines while they're part of the Ukrainian defense.
Where to watch: Via DocPlay.
The Six Triple Eight
Nominations: Best Original Song — 'The Journey' by Diane Warren
Our thoughts: The ever-prolific Tyler Perry directed not one, not two, but three films in 2024: thrillers Mea Culpa and Divorce in the Black, plus the World War II-set The Six Triple Eight. The last of the otherwise-unrelated trio brings the story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion to the screen — the only all-Black US Women's Army Corps dispatched overseas during the conflict. In the lead, Kerry Washington (Unprisoned) is a highlight. Perry helms with great intentions, honouring women who history shouldn't be permitted to forget. But none of that translates to an impressive feature, even with Oprah Winfrey (A Wrinkle in Time) adding to her acting resume.
Where to watch: Via Netflix.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
Nominations: Best Documentary Feature
Our thoughts: The Cold War. Jazz greats, including Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Melba Liston. America's operations through the CIA in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when it was newly independent from Belgium. Across two-and-a-half hours in essay style, Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez's (Blue Orchids) inventive and engaging — and thorough and dense — documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat explains how they're all connected, plus the 1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba and much more as well. It has the soundtrack, of course, as well as smarts, pace, thrills and a probing look both backwards and forward.
Where to watch: Via DocPlay.
The Substance
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Coralie Fargeat), Best Actress (Demi Moore), Best Original Screenplay, Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Our thoughts: If you suddenly looked like society's ideal, how would it change your life? The Substance asks this. With Revenge's Coralie Fargeat leading the charge on her long-awaited sophomore feature and earning Cannes' Best Screenplay Award for her troubles, the result is a new body-horror masterpiece. Pump it up: the sci-fi concept; the stunning command of sound, vision and tone; the savagery and smarts; the gonzo willingness to keep pushing and parodying; the gore (and there's gore); and the career-reviving performance from Demi Moore (Landman), who'll now always be remembered as newly 50-year-old actor and TV host Elisabeth Sparkle.
Where to watch: Via Stan, Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our full review.
Sugarcane
Nominations: Best Documentary Feature
Our thoughts: In 1981, more than a century after it was founded, the Catholic Church-run St Joseph's Mission residential school in British Columbia, Canada closed its doors. Reports of abuse swirled long before its shuttering, in some cases backed up by investigations and trials. Four decades afterwards, unmarked graves were discovered — and more distressing stories emerged, including of pregnancies resulting from sexual assaults and covered up. This is personal for Julian Brave NoiseCat, who co-directs the sensitively, potently, astutely and movingly told Sugarcane with fellow feature-length first-timer Emily Kassie: his father and grandmother are both part of this tale.
Where to watch: Via Disney+.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Nominations: Best Animated Feature Film
Our thoughts: Break out the Wensleydale cheese: Wallace & Gromit is back. The first film, short or feature-length, about the kind-hearted inventor (Ben Whitehead) and his beagle since 2008's A Matter of Loaf and Death — TV's Wallace & Gromit's World of Invention did pop up for six episodes in 2010, though — sees its namesakes targeted by penguin Feather McGraw on a quest for revenge. Despite the long break between screen outings, Aardman Animation's main duo have lost none of their charm. A delight of an all-ages flick, it's both humorous and heartfelt, nails its slapstick silliness, and even makes clever use of a robotic garden gnome.
Where to watch: Via Netflix.
The Wild Robot
Nominations: Best Animated Feature Film, Best Original Score, Best Sound
Our thoughts: A favourite on the page first, The Wild Robot is now an all-time gem on the screen. Boasting extraordinarily emotive voicework from Lupita Nyong'o (A Quiet Place: Day One), beautiful hand-painted forest imagery inspired by Studio Ghibli, assured direction from How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods' Chris Sanders, and a rousing score by Kris Bowers (Bridgerton) will do that. Story-wise, it spends time with Roz, aka ROZZUM unit 7134, after the android ends up on an animal-filled island and learns that there's more to existence than following your programming — and, in the process, The Wild Robot proves tender, warm and enchanting.
Where to watch: Via Apple TV and Prime Video.
Read our interview with Lupita Nyong'o and Chris Sanders.
The winners of the 2025 Oscars will be announced on Monday, March 3, Australian time. For further details, head to the awards' website.