One of the last major film festivals of the season, the 59th New York Film Festival, ran from September 24 to October 10, 2021. The event brought forth many of the year’s festival favorites to the city and world-premiering a few bigger titles. If not to the extent as Telluride or Toronto, NYFF still helps clarify the Oscars field.
The 94th Academy Awards will happen on March 27, 2022, in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theatre. The uncertain times have brought many changes into our everyday life, and for the Oscars, it meant the ceremony taking place in March for the first time since 2018. In addition, the schedule was planned so as to avoid any conflict with the Winter Olympics.
All films submitted for the Oscars must have been released theatrically between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2021. And the deadline for submissions was November 1, 2021. After the preliminary stage, five final nominees will be announced on February 8, 2022.
But where do we stand after the NYFF has been and gone?
Now is perhaps the right time to surf through the good and bad reviews to see which Oscar contenders would stand a chance to overwrite this year’s narratives.
The NYFF 2021 Winners
So much is still unknown. However, that doesn’t stop us from making foolish predictions. But before doing so, here is the complete list of 2021 winners of the NYFF.
Best Film: Drive My Car
Best First Film: The Lost Daughter
Best Actor: Benedict Cumberbatch for The Power of the Dog
Best Actress: Lady Gaga for House of Gucci
Best Director: Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog
Best Supporting Actor: Kodi Smit-McPhee for The Power of the Dog
Best Supporting Actress: Kathryn Hunter for The Tragedy of Macbeth
Best Foreign Language Film: The Worst Person in the World
Best Animated Film: The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Best Cinematography: West Side Story
Best Screenplay: Licorice Pizza
Best Non-Fiction Film: Flee
Special Awards were given to Maya Cade, Marshall Fine, Black Film Archive, Diane Weyermann, NYFCC, and Posthumous.
Now, the Predictions
This year, a big change to the Academy Awards is perhaps the introduction of a format that was used almost a decade ago—the Best Picture category will see ten nominees.
After the fall festivals, two movies that stood out from the rest were Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” and Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog.” Belfast can be thought of as a “Roma meets Derry Girls.” Nevertheless, it is also a bona fide crowd-pleaser, filled with charming performances, good craic, and nostalgic charm. The movie was a deserving winner of the TIFF Audience Award, an honor that almost always leads to a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards.
Nonetheless, we believe the cinephile might pick “The Power of Dog” this season. The Benedict Cumberbatch starrer is a cattle-ranching drama backed by the Netflix machine. Before bagging the Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor titles at the NYFF, the movie was described as a Western without any guns at the Telluride by Campion. “The Power of the Dog” is a slow-burning thriller, a film that unfurls its secrets at the very climax.
If you are an Academy fanatic, you would wish to see an Oscar season full of big mainstream hits. So, there are a few other contenders that shouldn’t be overlooked.
One possibility is the well-regarded Telluride offering, the tennis-dad biopic “King Richard” from Warner Bros. The movie also features the performance from Will Smith, which pushed the two-time nominee to the top of the Best Actor lists.
Then there is Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” which was in the spotlight at the NYFF. The movie might make it to the nominee list as long as it avoids the fate of the David Lynch version. Other titles to look for include Chloe Zhao’s “Eternals,” Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” and Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci.”
With all the movies running the Best Picture rat race, the Academy Awards nominee list will be an exciting event to watch out for. To make this awards season more exciting, why not try predicting the winners for some of the main categories. And what if we told you, you could potentially make a living out of it.
Most major sportsbooks across the United States currently offer odds for the Academy Awards with exciting prizes. So, why not check out the opportunities in case gambling is legal in your state. For instance, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and New York betting industries are all accepting wagers at the moment.