Golden Globes Film Preview: The Current Awards Season Would Make Great Programming for an A-List Film Festival
There are many different ways to measure a terrific film awards season.
Last year, “Barbenheimer” put two billion-dollar blockbusters at the center of the awards chatter. “Barbie” settled for an Oscar and a “box office achievement” Golden Globe, while “Oppenheimer” fulfilled its promise as the first (much-needed) awards season megahit and awards juggernaut in many years. Besides sweeping up multiple Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s opus also garnered both Oscar and Golden Globe best picture wins.
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Twenty-five years ago, the Oscar race was a Weinstein-era slugfest for best picture, with the Harvey-handled “Shakespeare in Love” keeping Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic “Saving Private Ryan” out of the top Oscar perch, while both films took home Golden Globe best picture trophies. This year has been knocked by some critics and some awards season pundits as perhaps not one for the history books, with a less than stellar lineup of key contenders.
But while it might lack the intense buzz of populist relevance like last year, this awards season has an appeal for anyone who values the film industry’s most distinctive and creatively ambitious film directors.
For those of us who must confess compulsive auteurism, 2024 looks like a flood of fascinating director-driven dramatic features that would make a hell of an A-list film festival competition lineup.
Hiding in plain sight this year is the fact that a dozen of the top contenders for Golden Globes and Oscars — airing Jan. 5 and March 2 , respectively — are helmed by directors who are veterans of the world’s top film festival competitions. Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance, San Sebastian: these 12 film artists have graced their hallowed and prestigious screens.
Pedro Almodóvar
Current awards contender for Oscar-winning Spanish maestro Almodóvar is the touching end of life drama “The Room Next Door,” which also boasts the pedigree of having won the coveted Golden Lion award at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Almodóvar’s no stranger to the global festival circuit, having been an award-winning mainstay of Cannes, Berlin and Venice for 40 years.
Jacques Audiard
If you’re hip enough to know why Audiard is a French nepo baby, you’ll probably also appreciate his Cannes Jury Prize win for current awards season contender “Emilia Pérez.” It’s been 30 years since Audiard debuted in Cannes with “See How They Fall.” Two years later, he won the best screenplay award at Cannes for “A Self-Made Hero,” and Audiard’s rarely been out of the festival spotlight since. He earned his Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2015 with “Dheepan” and scored a best director award at Venice for “The Sisters Brothers.”
Sean Baker
One of the key films of the Golden Globe and Oscar best picture races, Baker’s “Anora” burst out of Cannes with a Palme d’Or win and the critics’ plaudits haven’t let up since. In his 20 years of distinctive filmmaking, Baker has won acclaim on the festival circuit from SXSW to Locarno and Mar del Plata. Named as one of Variety’s Directors to Watch for his Sundance hit “Tangerine,” Baker moved on to the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight section with his Golden Globe- and Oscar-nominated film “The Florida Project.”
Brady Corbet
Before emerging as one of the decade’s most important filmmakers, Corbet starred in a long string of international film festival contenders. Features such as “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and “Clouds of Sils Maria” were hits at fests from Sundance to Locarno to Cannes. In 2015, Corbet’s directing debut, “The Childhood of a Leader,” scooped up the best new director award in Venice, and this year, Corbet had a triumphant return to the Festival when his latest film, “The Brutalist” scored a best director prize.
Clint Eastwood
Eastwood has been a treasured festival filmmaker for 40 years, debuting his allegoric Western “Pale Rider” at Cannes in 1985. He brought his jazz biopic “Bird” to the Croisette in 1988 and his John Huston roman à clef “White Hunter, Black Heart” premiered in Cannes in 1990. His latest, “Juror #2” is earning the 94-year-old legend some of the strongest reviews of his career, leading many to hope his long-time studio, Warner Bros., will listen to the audiences and critics and support the film with some awards season panache.
Robert Eggers
Eggers emerged as a visionary thriller filmmaker a decade ago, winning the directing prize at Sundance with his first feature, “The Witch.” Since then, his distinctive, visually inventive films have scored in festivals. His new film, “Nosferatu,” is the third screen telling of this famed vampire tale. There were no film festivals in 1922 when German film maestro F.W. Murnau made his version, but in 1979, Werner Herzog premiered his take on Count Orlok’s nefarious designs in competition at Berlin and came away with a top prize.
Coralie Fargeat
Recently named to Variety’s 28th annual Directors to Watch list, French writer-director Fargeat took home the best screenplay award in Cannes this year for her tour de force body horror provocation “The Substance.” On this side of the pond, “Substance” connected with the Toronto Festival crowd at its packed opening night slot in the fest’s “Midnight Madness” section.
James Mangold
“A Complete Unknown” helmer Mangold’s acclaim comes straight from his Hollywood peers, rather than on the festival circuit. He made an auspicious debut with his award-winning film “Heavy” at Sundance, Gijon and Cannes in 1995, but since then his key recognitions have been home-grown gold, receiving a best picture Oscar nod for “Ford v Ferrari,” a screenplay nomination for his work on “Logan” and a best picture Golden Globe for “Walk the Line,” along with a best actress win for Reese Witherspoon.
Steve Mcqueen
McQueen’s first film, “Hunger,” won the Camera d’Or prize in Cannes, while his follow-up, “Shame,” won awards in Venice, and both were signals of his breathtaking talent, which fully blossomed with his Oscar best picture win for “12 Years a Slave.” This year, McQueen tackles a WWII tale, “Blitz,” which bowed to acclaim at this year’s London Film Festival.
Jeff Nichols
From his first feature, the Indie Spirit nominated “Shotgun Stories” almost two decades ago, Nichols has found favor with festivals all over the world, with “Mud” securing a competition slot in Cannes and “Midnight Special” gaining a competitive spot in Berlin. His new film, the masterful, poetic “The Bikeriders,” scored a best director honor for Nichols at the Mill Valley Film Festival, but given its shift from Disney to Focus, the film appears to have taken an awards season tumble. That’s a shame, because Nichols’ passionate vision of alienated American men, tragically in search of purpose, questing for freedom, couldn’t be timelier.
Ridley Scott
Now in the awards fray with his Roman epic “Gladiator II,” it’s been nearly 50 years since Scott’s first feature film, “The Duellists,” premiered in the Cannes festival competition. But time has not dimmed the wattage of his recall for shenanigans having to do with pliant jury members and bags of francs. In the decades since then, Scott has claimed berths at San Sebastian, Fantasporto, Camerimage and Valladolid and, of course, scooped up Oscars such as his best picture win for his new film’s origin story, “Gladiator.”
Denis Villeneuve
Canadian helmer Villeneuve broke through with his 2010 film “Incendies,” which scored in Venice and Toronto. Twelve years earlier, his first film, “August
32nd on Earth,” premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. In the past decade, Venice has welcomed Villeneuve’s sci-fi epics “Dune: Part One” and “Arrival.” With “Dune: Part Two,” Villeneuve looks to add to his three Oscar nominations and his Golden Globe best
director nomination.
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