What will win Best Picture?
Conclave's BAFTA win puts it back in Oscar contention – but it's still an outside bet due to two other nominees carrying momentum
Kate Green/Getty Images
- Patrick Cremona
Whatever your views on the merits of each of the films in consideration, it can’t be denied that it’s been a funny old awards season.
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From hotly contested races in some of the big categories to major controversies regarding individual nominees, the campaign trail has been full of surprises – particularly when with a view to last year’s race, when a string of victories for Oppenheimer always felt like something of a foregone conclusion. The odds for the all-important Best Picture trophy at the upcoming Oscars have been especially prone to fluctuation, and indeed several of the big Hollywood trade magazines have switched their chosen frontrunner almost too many times to count. Recently, it appeared as if Sean Baker’s Anora might have emerged as the consensus pick following a glut of key precursor wins, but it looks like yet another spanner could have been thrown in the works following Conclave’s Best Film win at the recent BAFTAs.
Or has it? In truth, although Conclave’s win certainly pushes it back into the conversation as far as the Best Picture race is concerned, this seems more likely to be one of the increasingly common years where BAFTA and the Academy opt for different winners.
Indeed, although the BAFTAs can often feel like something of a dress rehearsal for the Oscars when it comes to the acting categories, the winners of the top prize at the two ceremonies have diverged in eight of the previous ten years – so looking at the BAFTA winner is not an especially reliable method of predicting Best Picture.
The BAFTA Best Film winner has been different to the Oscar Best Picture winner in eight of the last ten years
It’s also worth noting that Conclave always looked like being a more popular pick with BAFTA voters, with the film having led the way with 12 nominations going into the ceremony, compared to eight at the Oscars. And BAFTA has previous for giving the top prize to a film made by director Edward Berger, with his adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front having won two years ago only for Everything Everywhere All at Once to triumph at the Oscars. With all that in mind, plus Berger's absence from the Best Director nominations and sentiment from some quarters that Conclave would be a safe or slightly uninspiring Oscar winner, the film seems unlikely to claim the golden statuette next month.
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Instead, you can make an (educated) guess that the aforementioned Anora is still the film to beat, with wins at all of the awards for the Producers, Writers and Directors Guilds having made it the obvious pick. Similarly, some remain relatively bullish about the chances of Brady Corbet’s mesmerising epic The Brutalist – which won in the Best Motion Picture, Drama category at the Golden Globes. With less than two weeks to go at the time of writing, they remain the most likely titles to be etched onto an Oscar plinth.
Authors
Patrick CremonaSenior Film Writer
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
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