Oscars 2025: All 10 Best Picture Nominees, Ranked from Worst to Best
Even after campaigning was well underway in fall 2024, the year 2025 saw one of the messiest Oscar seasons in internet memory, “Conclave” levels of contenders and nominees’ chances dropping left and right in a fight to the death. The implosion of “Emilia Pérez,” despite being one of the most nominated films ever (with 13 total, including Best Picture), introduced both a sadness and a perhaps much-needed jolt into what could have been a predictable race for the Jacques Audiard-directed, decidedly non-Mexican musical to conquer.
We were left wondering if safer bets like “A Complete Unknown” or even juggernaut grosser “Wicked” could take over as a Best Picture winner. Then, “Anora” stepped in and swept the PGAs, the DGAs, and the Critics Choice Awards in one weekend, reminding pundits never to read too closely into the tea leaves of the Golden Globes, where “Emilia” and “The Brutalist” reigned and “Anora” was shut out.
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Four of the 10 2025 Best Picture Oscar nominees showed up on IndieWire’s list of the Best Films of 2024, leaving a massive gulf between our take and the Academy’s on the other six. But then, “I’m Still Here” emerged as a serious spoiler once Fernanda Torres won Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globes, and fanned-out support for “Emilia Pérez” as the French Oscar entry made room for the Brazilian entry to possibly even take Best International Feature, the one category “Emilia Pérez” seemed poised to claim even after backlash.
Since the Oscar season now starts in earnest at Cannes (“Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance,” and “Anora” all premiered and won prizes there in May 2024), we are now looking at a nearly-10-month-long movie awards season of writing and discussing the same films. So when however online-only controversies like “did ‘The Brutalist’ use too much AI?” or “why didn’t Sean Baker use an intimacy coordinator on ‘Anora’?” begin to emerge, they certainly add suspense to a race that was beginning to feel preordained and uninspiring. Or when a seemingly online-only controversy of Karla Sofía Gascón’s inflammatory tweets then turns into international news, emboldened then by Mexico’s outrage over her movie’s dismissal of Mexican culture and talent despite being set in the country.
Everyone involved on all 10 of these films deserves an award for trotting themselves out with bells on to Q&As and Academy screenings and press days, doing their damn best to spin the same old rusted talking points into new gold. But the votes are closed, and the Oscars are finally, finally upon us this Sunday, March 2.
How well these 10 films will be remembered in the annals of history is too soon to tell right now, though there are a handful, as you’ll see on our ranking, that already feel close to icon. Below, IndieWire ranks the 10 Best Picture nominees from worst to best.
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