AFFotD’s 2024 Oscar Guide – All the Other Categories That Aren’t Best Picture or an Acting Category

“No we will not watch all the short live action films.”

~Our Exhausted Staff

We’ve done the work of watching every film nominated for Best Film as well as the additional movies from 2024 with nominations for the Acting Categories, and we spent a good 7,000 words doing so. That’s why, for our staff’s sanity, we’ll not be doing a nomination-by-nomination breakdown for the rest of the Oscars to be awarded this Sunday.

Instead, we’ll highlight our predictions, while offering some thoughts if we have something to say about any particular nominated film in any category.

Some of these will just be a name and a film, and our staff thanks the editors for giving them that rest.

AFFotD’s Academy Award Predictions

International Feature Film

(We have only seen The Zone of Interest but we’re pretty confident on this one.)

• “Io Capitano,” Italy
• “Perfect Days,” Japan
• “Society of the Snow,” Spain
• “The Teachers’ Lounge,” Germany
• “The Zone of Interest,” United Kingdom****(winner)
  • France’s decision to not submit Anatomy of a Fall as their entry for this film (WHAT ARE YOU DOING FRANCE?) makes this about as much of a slam dunk as you can get for the rare foreign-language British-Oscar film.

Animated Feature Film

(Again, we have only seen one of these, but we are pretty confident about this.)

• “The Boy and the Heron”
• “Elemental”
• “Nimona”
• “Robot Dreams”
• “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”*** (winner)
  • We haven’t seen any of the other movies. But we sure as hell saw Spider-Verse.

Adapted Screenplay

• “American Fiction”
• “Barbie”**** (winner)
  • This is a bit of a reach. Honestly, Oppenheimer will probably win this, since it will probably win Best Picture, and in the past five years the Best Picture winner has lost a Screenplay nomination only once.
• “Oppenheimer”
  • They’ll probably win, but we’re hoping for a #justiceforgreta moment that gives it to Barbie.
• “Poor Things”
• “The Zone of Interest”

Original Screenplay

• “Anatomy of a Fall”**** (winner)
  • This has won a lot of major awards in this category and is nominated for five pretty major awards, so this might be the “consolation prize” win for this movie. (That said, the script is definitely worthy).
• “The Holdovers”
• “Maestro”
• “May December”
  • This movie is about a teacher who slept with her teenage student, and is now married to him. If this wins it’ll be…uncomfortable.
• “Past Lives”
  • This is the second most likely film to win. If Anatomy of a Fall doesn’t win, this will probably get it, largely for a similar reason (major nominations with little chance of winning the other categories).

Visual Effects

• “The Creator”
  • If this doesn’t go to Godzilla Minus One it’ll go here. The visual effects here were easily the best part of this surprisingly non-memorable Netflix spectacle. And it’s probably not likely to win due to the second half of that previous sentence.
• “Godzilla Minus One”****(winner)
  • If you deny an Oscar to these folk do you even deserve your heart?
• “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”
• “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”
• “Napoleon”

Original Score

• “American Fiction”
• “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”
  • Lol you remember this came out this year?
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
  • If Opopenheimer doesn’t come away with it, this will be the winner. The nominee, Robbie Robertson, passed away this year at the age of 80, making him the first posthumous nominee for this award. This was his first nomination. Needless to say, if this surprises predictors by winning…we’re good with it.
• “Oppenheimer”**** (winner)
  • Ludwig Göransson previously won an Oscar for Black Panther and is likely to win again here, as he has won all the major awards in this category so far this year.
• “Poor Things”

Original Song

• “It Never Went Away” from “American Symphony”
• “I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie”
• “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie”**** (winner)
  • Momentum seems to say that Eillish and Finneas are going to win for the more soul-ful, heartfelt song, instead of the equally deserving silly “I’m Just Ken.” But if they don’t win, the other Barbie song will.
• “The Fire Inside” from “Flamin’ Hot”
  • Haha holy shit the streaming movie about Flamin’ Hot Cheetos got an Oscar nomination?
• “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Documentary Feature Film

(We haven’t seen any of these films, so we’re going off of themes, politics and other predictions.)

• “20 Days in Mariupol”**** (winner)
  • This will come down to either this (Ukraine, sad) or Bobi Wine (Ugandan, uplifting). We’re leaning towards the more topical topic coming away with a win.
• “Bobi Wine: The People’s President”
  • If Mariupol doesn’t win, this’ll take the statue.
• “The Eternal Memory”
• “Four Daughters”
• “To Kill a Tiger”

Cinematography

• “El Conde”
  • (This is the only film in this category we haven’t seen, but we
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
  • This is likely to be the best chance to be a spoiler to Oppenheimer, but it probably won’t win.
• “Maestro”
• “Oppenheimer”**** (Winner)
  • They literally showed an atomic bomb explosion without using an atomic bomb explosion. I mean, that’ll give them visual effects, but between the spectacle and the many different types of shots, (and it winning all the major awards so far) it seems to be Oppenheimer‘s year leads us to think this will come away with a lot of statues.
• “Poor Things”
  • Very little chance of this winning, but honestly? It would deserve it if it did. Its cinematography does a lot in this quirky film.

Costume Design

• “Barbie”**** (winner)
  • This is one of the more up in the air. Honestly you can make a strong case for just about all of these nominees coming away with this. Killers, Napoleon and Oppenheimer have striking period costumes that define the film. Poor Things has about a 45% chance of winning this because the costumes in Poor Things are wilding.
    • But Barbie needs to get some statues and this movie thrived on its subversive corporate message and existential features but…the look was spot on. It built a world so clearly, and the costumes were part of that. And the costumes were on point.
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• “Napoleon”
• “Oppenheimer”
• “Poor Things”
  • (this might end up winning to be honest.)

Animated Short film

• “Letter to a Pig”
• “Ninety-Five Senses”
• “Our Uniform”
• “Pachyderme”
• “War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”**** (Winner)
  • We’ve not seen a single one of these. But, this seems to be the most likely to win.

Live Action Short Film

• “The After”
• “Invincible”
• “Knight of Fortune”
  • If Anderson doesn’t win for Henry Sugar, we’ll be mad. But this is most likely to take the title. Don’t you dare, Knight.
• “Red, White and Blue”
• “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”
  • We have only seen this one, because it’s a Wes Anderson Netflix collaboration, and that should give you a sense of the racial makeup of our staff. That said, Wes Anderson has never won an Oscar…this seems like a low-stakes way to change that? (the film itself is very delightful).

Documentary Short Film

• “The ABCs of Book Banning”*** (winner)
  • This is one of our reaches. It’s going to be between this and The Last Repair Shop (which most people think will win). And we haven’t seen any of these! But we can see the Academy locking in on this topic and giving it votes for that. We’re fine taking a miss on this one, but here’s whawt we’re prediciting. Keep in mind we have not watched a single second of any of these short films.
• “The Barber of Little Rock”
• “Island in Between”
• “The Last Repair Shop”
  • This probably should win. We originally planned on picking it. But hey, shooters gonna shoot.
• “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó”

Film editing

• “Anatomy of a Fall”
• “The Holdovers”
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• “Oppenheimer”**** (winner)
  • Anatomy of a Fall is the likely spoiler if this is to be spoiled. But this…is probably Oppenhenheimer‘s year.
• “Poor Things”

Sound

• “The Creator”
• “Maestro”
• “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”
• “Oppenheimer”**** (winner)
  • This is a tricky one. The Atomic bomb scene should be more than enough to give this trophy out. But at the same time, the subtlety of The Zone of Interest (a movie that expresses the horror of the holocaust without showing the atrocities, but letting you hear them from a distance) is a deserving winner.
• “The Zone of Interest”
  • Our Oppenheimer prediction is a “safe” bet because we see a large sweep there. But The Zone of Interest deserves a statue, and we can see this being the most likely area where voters throw them a bone (rightfully so).

Production design

• “Barbie”****(winner)
  • When you make the world run out of pink, you probably should get some gold for your efforts.
• “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• “Napoleon”
• “Oppenheimer”
• “Poor Things”

Makeup and hairstyling

• “Golda”
  • We haven’t even heard of this?
• “Maestro“**** (winner)
  • For all the kerfuffle about the “nose of it all” around this movie, this movie makes Cooper look like Bernstein…and also does top-end age makeup. So this seems like a likely win, especially since the film is unlikely to get any other wins from its seven nominations.
• “Oppenheimer”
• “Poor Things”
  • This is commonly listed as a potential spoiler or dark horse, but we don’t see it. One of the selling points of the films is that Emma Stone is barely given makeup for a natural look. (Admittedly they do a lot of scar makeup on Willem Dafoe.)
• “Society of the Snow”
  • Also, haven’t heard of this one. But it seems more likely that one of the major films is likely to come away with a consolation award here.

Best Director

• Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”
• Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”
• Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”****(Winner)
  • This seems like a foregone conclusion, though it’s not unwarranted. Oppenheimer is a great film, and Nolan has been this generation’s most influential directors, basically the Scorsese for Millennials, but it seems like this is the year he gets his crown.
• Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
• Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”

Who knows though. We could be full of shit. We’ll own it if we are. Enjoy your Oscars, and in less than a week, look to see our evaluation of our predictions.