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Oscar 2021 Winner Predictions: Who Will Win…and Who Should Win

We’re countering this Oscar year’s slow death of a thousand cuts by ripping the whole bandage off.

Oscar 2021 Winner Predictions: Who Will Win and Who Could Win
Photo: Fox Searchlight

Those who have followed Slant for a while know that we normally count down the days until the Oscar telecast by revealing our predictions for each category one at a time, inching closer and closer to the inevitable disappointments and outrages that AMPAS has in store for us. With apologies to Oscar telecast producer Steven Soderbergh, this year’s edition just doesn’t feel like a “roll out the red carpet” affair.

This awards season ended up being longer than the time it took for a significant portion of the population to get vaccinated for a deadly disease that your annoying uncle was still making “Budweiser virus” jokes about on Facebook when the first eligible films were screening. As studios held their juiciest awards bait in cold storage until things could return to normal, the sense that maybe the Oscars would be forced to dig deeper and dig, well, cooler to fill out their ballots ultimately gave way to the realization that it would be business as usual, only with far fewer in-the-chalk prospects to spice up the journey toward the inevitable.

Not helping matters: the usual suspects. Or, as Wesley Morris recently wrote in the New York Times, “These pundits don’t read tea leaves. They’re actually brewing tea. The nominees often look just as they say they will.” No more so than this year. Even this year’s whisper-campaign scandal leveled against the presumptive frontrunner (“Nomadland: Soft on Amazon?”) feels like a by-the-motions shrug than a true publicist blitzkrieg. As such, we’re countering this Oscar year’s slow death of a thousand cuts and ripping the whole bandage off below.


Nomadland

Best Picture

  • The Father
  • Judas and the Black Messiah
  • Mank
  • Minari
  • Nomadland
  • Promising Young Woman
  • Sound of Metal
  • The Trial of the Chicago 7

Will Win: Nomadland

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Should Win: Sound of Metal

Regarding the Amazon brouhaha, that there’s any static at all around a film as sedate and discursive as Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland only confirms its baseline legitimacy in the race. It’s our current best picture-elect in a field of films that, regardless of their varying levels of quality (and, oh, do they vary), collectively embody the sense of treading water in no particular direction while simultaneously fighting off the existential dread that defined 2020. Well, maybe with the exception of Promising Young Woman, which in its uncanny ability to royally trigger the vanguard of Film Twitter’s not-alt-right faction may represent the last touchstone film of the Trump era. (God, we hope.) Emerald Fennell’s Clockwork Pink screed is frequently tagged as Nomadland’s closest competitor, or at least on equal footing with Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, a genuine Dad-mobile of a film whose fine re-upholstering only underlines its status as a fossil-fuel-glugging throwback. Both present the kind of sociopolitical fantasies that voters crave, and which this year’s category is otherwise notably thin on, but if the comparatively enigmatic Nomadland’s even still surprising durability in this year’s award season proves anything, it’s that everyone’s eyes have been at least marginally cleared in this year of reflection, even Hollywood’s.


Nomadland

Best Director

  • Lee Isaac Chung, Minari
  • Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman
  • David Fincher, Mank
  • Thomas Vinterberg, Another Round
  • Chloé Zhao, Nomadland

Will Win: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland

Should Win: Thomas Vinterberg, Another Round

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Remember when many a hopeful pundit gleefully predicted that we could see this category entirely composed of female directors? AMPAS effectively put the kibosh on such a seismically glass-shattering event (sorry Kelly Reichardt, Autumn de Wilde, and Eliza Hittman) by moving the goal posts for when a film had to open before qualifying for the 93rd Academy Awards, effectively cementing the status quo that fortune favors the film that opens late in the calendar year. But two female directors were nominated here in the end, and one of them, Chloé Zhao, has run the table with critics and guilds throughout the awards season, meaning that the glass ceiling will at least crack a little more on Oscar night.


Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Best Actor

  • Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal
  • Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
  • Anthony Hopkins, The Father
  • Gary Oldman, Mank
  • Steven Yeun, Minari

Will Win: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Should Win: Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal

This is easily the strongest category of this Oscar year, and more than a few of the nominees here would rank among of the finest winners to ever receive the award. And while it’s difficult to imagine the late Chadwick Boseman losing here for his richly frantic performance of a character who’s not only at constant contradictory extremes but also inseparable from a best actress frontrunner, Anthony Hopkins, who won the BAFTA over Boseman, has surged in the homestretch and is second only to Riz Ahmed for the actor in this category with the longest screen time, a reliable bellwether of late when it comes to predicting the winner.

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Promising Young Woman

Best Actress

  • Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
  • Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday
  • Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman
  • Frances McDormand, Nomadland
  • Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman

Will Win: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman

Should Win: Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Once the first wave of top-tier critics’ awards finished giving their attention to Never Rarely Sometimes Always’s Sidney Flanigan, just about everyone saw Carey Mulligan sweeping the guilds. Of all the viable candidates, her alchemy of being young, respected, at the center of a film that would’ve likely been at the center of a zeitgeist controversy in a non-locked down world, and (most importantly) Oscar-less going into the ceremony seemed like an unbeatable blueprint. And yet, every heat in the last few months broke someone else’s way: Andra Day snagged the Globe, Viola Davis the SAG, and Frances McDormand the BAFTA. The universe seems to be bending over backward not to give Mulligan the Oscar, and yet, those nominations for Promising Young Woman don’t lie. As fierce as we think Day is in a better-than-it-ought-to-be film, we’re betting being the de facto frontrunner in what’s turned into a highly competitive race remains enough to tip the scales in Mulligan’s favor.


Judas and the Black Messiah

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

  • Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7
  • Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
  • Leslie Odom Jr., One Night in Miami
  • Paul Raci, Sound of Metal
  • Lakeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah

Will Win: Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah

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Should Win: Leslie Odom Jr., One Night in Miami

Until PricewaterhouseCoopers shows us the receipts, we will never know to what extent a vote split may have actually cost an actor an Oscar. But even if we were to entertain the possibility that Lakeith Stanfield will draw votes away from his Judas and the Black Messiah co-star, then it’s only fair to entertain to what extent voters may or may not be voting against an actor because of category fraud and whether or not they are more or less inclined to vote for Leslie Odom Jr. if they’re also voting for him the song category, at which point you may just decide that life’s too short to worry about how hairs are split. Newly minded SAG- and BAFTA-winner Daniel Kaluuya has this one in the bag.


Minari

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

  • Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
  • Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy
  • Olivia Colman, The Father
  • Amanda Seyfried, Mank
  • Young Yuh-jung, Minari

Will Win: Young Yuh-jung, Minari

Should Win: Young Yuh-jung, Minari

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Last month, we said “There will be plenty of time to wring hands over, as Instagram’s maniacally obsessed @dublin_zoetrope put it, the perfect 2021-ness of Glenn Close finally winning her Oscar only in the supporting category during a ceremony held on Zoom for a film that had 25% approval on Rotten Tomatoes.” How bemusedly quixotic of us. Suffice it to say that Close is probably not going to dress up like an Oscar statuette this time around. Ignoring for now the accompanying Razzie nomination for the same performance, it became quickly obvious that even the perviest of voters aren’t about to terminate Close’s close to 40-year-old verge on winning during this asterisk of an Oscar year. And, as if to prove that just because a year has an asterisk is no reason for an Oscar winner to have one, the groundswell of support for Minari should help lift Young Yuh-jung, who brings an undeniable spark of life to the film from her first appearance, to a deserved Oscar to go along with her SAG and BAFTA.


Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Best Costume Design

  • Emma
  • Mank
  • Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
  • Mulan
  • Pinocchio

Will Win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Should Win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Period almost always has the edge over fantasy in this category, and while we could spend some time debating whether Mank is closer to period than it is to fantasy, the race here most definitely feels like a showdown between Alexandra Byrne’s pastel frills in Emma and Ann Roth’s Jazz Age textures in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The gowns in the former are runway ready, but it’s Roth’s creations that truly embody the characters wearing them. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom missing out on a best picture nod make this a closer race than it would’ve been otherwise, but the 89-year-old Roth is the sentimental favorite.

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Sound of Metal

Best Sound

  • Greyhound
  • Mank
  • News of the World
  • Soul
  • Sound of Metal

Will Win: Sound of Metal

Should Win: Sound of Metal

We don’t expect voters to wander off the path of least resistance now that they don’t have to distinguish between sound mixing and sound editing. Their fondness for films with so much sturm and drang is only surpassed by their love for ones that are fundamentally about sound. And given that it’s a best picture nominee with the actual name of the category in its title, it’s difficult to imagine any film but Sound of Metal taking this prize.


If Anything Happens I Love You

Best Animated Short

  • Burrow
  • Genius Loci
  • If Anything Happens I Love You
  • Opera
  • Yes-People

Will Win: If Anything Happens I Love You

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Should Win: Opera

We have a special fondness for the sweetly uplifting Burrow, about a little brown rabbit who has a rough time moving into a patch of earth heavily populated by other animals, and the deadpan Yes-People, in which much comedy gold is mined by an assortment of frustrated Icelanders from the word “já.” And Opera’s mind-boggling geometry suggests the entire history of human existence in eight epic minutes, a feat impressive enough that it feels entirely out of its element here; even its staunchest defenders (read: us) will tell you that it feels closer to an installation than a short film. Pixar doesn’t have a great winning streak in this category, but two of its five wins here have occurred in the last five years, and Burrow will certainly resonate with anyone who came to appreciate their neighbors a little more during our pandemic moment. But it’s difficult to imagine it taking this award from If Anything Happens I Love You, an evocative and cathartic fusion of minimalist animation and naked emotion that punches the audience in the gut once the source of its main characters’ grief (which gives the short its title) is finally revealed.


Two Distant Strangers

Best Live-Action Short

  • Feeling Through
  • The Letter Room
  • The Present
  • Two Distant Strangers
  • White Eye

Will Win: Two Distant Strangers

Should Win: White Eye

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On the level of filmmaking alone, White Eye is the best in show, a tense, single-shot crescendo on the way systems build prejudices into the populace in ways that, unfailingly, lead to tragedy every single time. Thrillers in miniature never tend to win here, but few of the previous nominees with similar executions have been built on such a solid spine of the universality of injustice. (In stark contrast, The Present breaks toward far more jejune outrage triggers.) Instead, we’re left weighing the nominees that most live up to this category’s history and the year we all endured. The Letter Room isn’t just this lineup’s only injection of star power—Oscar Isaac plays the sympathetic manager of a prison mailroom—it arguably feels about as close to a pre-pandemic MOR Oscar contender as any of this year’s best picture lineup. Add to that the sense that its genteel soft sell is a solid fit with the dawn of the Joe Biden era. Any other year and we’d check it and move on, if not for the presence of Two Distant Strangers. An ACAB spin on the Groundhog Day template, Two Distant Strangers depicts Joey Bada$$ repeatedly reliving a fatal encounter with the N.Y.P.D. cop targeting him. While it’s a literal and figurative tonal nightmare, oddly flippant about the everyday trauma of being black in America, it caps off with an attempted gut-punch inversion of the genre’s “here’s how to escape the time loop” cliché and puts a cherry on top in the form of its militant credit roll (one which in just the last few weeks could expand to include Daunte Wright and Adam Toledo). Yes, there are plenty out there for whom this all-caps film most definitely doesn’t work, but the ones it does will be hard pressed to feel comfortable voting for anything else.


Sound of Metal

Best Film Editing

  • The Father
  • Nomadland
  • Promising Young Women
  • Sound of Metal
  • The Trial of the Chicago 7

Will Win: Sound of Metal

Should Win: The Father

The Father performs the deftest trick of any of the nominees here, working in tandem with the production design to uncannily insert the viewer into the subjectivity of the main character’s eroding cognition, while at the same time avoiding any showboating overtures. But it was also the only nominee here not also nominated for the ACE Eddie Award, suggesting that it might actually be too subtle for some voters. Not the case with the similarly subjective Sound of Metal, which is both frantic and sedated where it needs to be. The film’s sound design gets the plaudits for immersing audiences in the sudden hearing loss that its main character suffers, but it wouldn’t work half as well if the images weren’t equally precise.

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Soul

Best Original Score

  • Da 5 Bloods
  • Mank
  • Minari
  • News of the World
  • Soul

Will Win: Soul

Should Win: Soul

We have a fantasy wherein we tie every high school classmate who worshipped Nine Inch Nails in the ’90s into a torture chair, a la the “Happiness in Slavery” video, and force them to listen to the soundtrack of Mank in its entirety, to see how long they last before asking instead to just get a hammer to the balls. It’s an admittedly odd fantasy, but one that News of the World’s James Newton Howard no doubt understands, as the now nine-time nominee considers attending what looks to be another fruitless night at the Oscars. Here’s hoping that he won’t enter a downward spiral after Trent Reznor (in one of the evening’s foregone conclusions) becomes a two-time Oscar-winning composer for the other film he’s nominated for.


Time

Best Documentary Feature

  • Collective
  • Crip Camp
  • The Mole Agent
  • My Octopus Teacher
  • Time

Will Win: Time

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Should Win: Time

Best documentary feature has a track record for disappointment that’s incomparable to any other category. We bemoan the absence of more than a few films that made the final shortlist, including Boys State and especially Welcome to Chechnya (which also deserved a nomination for its heroic use of visual effects), but without them in the mix, or MLK/FBI, or Notturno, only Collective stands to cut into the support of fellow critical darling Time, Garrett Bradley’s remarkable documentary about a black family torn apart by the U.S. prison industry. The film is heartbreaking and very much of the moment, and that may just be enough to fend off the groundswell for the not-at-all-creepy My Octopus Teacher, which also has to complete with Netflix’s other uplifting documentary in the category, Crip Camp.


Colette

Best Documentary Short Subject

  • Colette
  • A Concerto Is a Conversation
  • Do Not Split
  • Hunger Ward
  • A Love Song for Latasha

Will Win: Colette

Should Win: A Concerto Is a Conversation

We can report that none of this year’s finalists in what’s frequently the sloggiest of categories tested our patience, to say nothing of our ever-wavering sense of empathy in this, the longest Oscar season of all time. Not that the category deviates from its familiar recipe, as every nominee deals directly with the year’s most popular themes (this time around, trauma and community), and it’s impossible to discount any of them entirely. Neither Hunger Ward (about Yemeni youth dying from famine) nor Do Not Split (an in-the-trenches look at the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, and whose nomination is responsible for China’s boycott of the awards this year) want for jaw-dropping images, but voters almost always opt for intimate portraits of individuals. Of the two tonally opposing looks at race in the U.S., most pundits have A Love Song for Latasha winning, and with its parallels to the here and now (Latasha Harlins was, like George Floyd, killed at a convenience store) it’s not hard to see why. But A Concerto Is a Conversation’s commitment to viewing progress through the lens of black excellence compels even before the short reveals a crucial link to a recent (through quite contentious) best picture winner. Still, Colette’s central figure, a French resistance fighter making a long-delayed pilgrimage in tribute to her brother killed in the Holocaust, moves from reticence to table-slapping impatience with performatively penitent Germans. It’s the safe bet.


Quo Vadis, Aida?

Best International Feature Film

  • Another Round (Denmark)
  • Better Days (Hong Kong)
  • Collective (Romania)
  • The Man Who Sold His Skin (Tunisia)
  • Quo Vadis, Aida? (Bosnia)

Will Win: Quo Vadis, Aida?

Should Win: Collective

The money here is on Another Round. Not counting Cold War in 2018, when Paweł Pawlikowski was nominated opposite Alfonso Cuarón in the directing category, you have to back all the way to 1976 to land on a film (none other than the glass ceiling-shattering Steven Beuties) that lost to one that wasn’t nominated for its direction. But, then, it’s only been in the last decade that the directors branch has started to nominate international features for their direction at a clip that approaches the Academy’s rate in the ’60s and ’70s, so it’s only a matter of time before the outliers can no longer be described as such. Two of the dominant themes of this year’s Oscar lineup are the moral fabric of community and the legacy of trauma, and Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida? has the distinction of working both of them out concurrently. The film, anchored by Jasna Djuricic’s remarkable performance, is a triumph of escalating fury, and it inevitably draws comparison to another Bosnian film, No Man’s Land, with a gut-punch of an ending that also prevailed here and to the surprise of many.


Mank

Best Production Design

  • The Father
  • Mank
  • Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
  • News of the World
  • Tenet

Will Win: Mank

Should Win: The Father

Mank coming up empty despite 10 nominations is very much within the realm of possibility, as it’s easy to see Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom running the tech table, but given AMPAS’s almost pathological fondness for both period productions and films about the dream factory, it checks off the right boxes to at least guarantee a victory here. It does warm the cockles, though, that two contemporary films are nominated in this category, suggesting that change is afoot, so we’re hoping that The Father, for how it cannily and subtly positions every inch of its production as a weapon aimed at its protagonist, pulls an upset.


Tenet

Best Visual Effects

  • Love and Monsters
  • The Midnight Sky
  • Mulan
  • The One and Only Ivan
  • Tenet

Will Win: Tenet

Should Win: Tenet

With the release of each new Christopher Nolan film, the filmmaker is heralded anew for his ostensibly pure command of technical craft. And given the glory that his films have received at the Oscars in the last decade, it was more than a little surprising that Tenet only landed two nominations. A clapback, perhaps, at the filmmaker for stubbornly insisting that his latest see a theatrical release in the midst of a global pandemic. Or maybe voters were just generally in sync this time around with fans of the auteur about what worked and what didn’t about the film. For as much backlash as Tenet’s sound design received, it was met only by praise for the wizardry, in-camera and otherwise, that brought its time-bending sequences to life.


Nomadland

Best Cinematography

  • Judas and the Black Messiah
  • Mank
  • News of the World
  • Nomadland
  • The Trial of the Chicago 7

Will Win: Nomadland

Should Win: Nomadland

We weren’t holding our breath for a First Cow nomination blitz, but given this category’s track record, a nod for Christopher Blauvelt seemed almost assured. In his absence, the quiet majesty of Joshua James Richards’s cinematography for Nomadland, an extension of his work on Chloé Zhao’s earlier The Rider, easily towers above the rest.


Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

  • Emma
  • Hillbilly Elegy
  • Mank
  • Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
  • Pinocchio

Will Win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Should Win: Pinocchio

Just as it seemed for a hot second that Glenn Close would end her Oscar drought on the saddest possible note, we had a momentary bout of panic that Hillbilly Elegy’s downright grotesque interpretations of the subjects of the New York Times’s weekly profiles of Trump voters would make the film a double winner. The moment passed, but it’s hard to say that our sanity’s been restored, as even we’re not sure why exactly the smeared lipstick and sweat-blemished rouge of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the frontrunner here. It just is, and as we have doubts that all too many Oscar voters made it a point to catch Pinocchio’s half-pint Freddy Krueger, even as their careers spend the pandemic in cold storage, who are we to argue?


Soul

Best Animated Feature

  • Onward
  • Over the Moon
  • A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
  • Soul
  • Wolfwalkers

Will Win: Soul

Should Win: Wolfwalkers

Given the controversy over Disney’s release strategy surrounding Soul (and Pixar’s upcoming Luca), it seemed as if the stage was set for Cartoon Saloon to finally take the Oscar here. But it’s mostly critics groups that have rallied behind Wolfwalkers, and while it remains to be seen if the Mouse House’s new release model is here to stay, Soul’s guild triumphs indicate that what felt impulsive to industry insiders at first blush seems a little more practical in the rearview, given that the studio’s model is not all that different from the one adopted by other studios in the midst of the Covid pandemic. And as fortune favors both Disney and the BAFTA winner here, this one is firmly Soul’s to lose.


Nomadland

Best Adapted Screenplay

  • Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
  • The Father
  • Nomadland
  • One Night in Miami
  • The White Tiger

Will Win: Nomadland

Should Win: The Father

Nomadland may be a lock in cinematography and director, and still looks mighty fine for the top prize, but adapted screenplay might be one of the trophies that doesn’t end up going its way. Nomadland is, true to its title, a predominately discursive experience, surrounded here by far more classically structured screenplays. If we’re still giving it an edge, it’s only because The Father (which won the BAFTA) and One Night in Miami (which wasn’t nominated for one) don’t do half as much as Chloé Zhao did to transform her material into something new.


Promising Young Woman

Best Original Screenplay

  • Judas and the Black Messiah
  • Minari
  • Promising Young Woman
  • Sound of Metal
  • The Trial of the Chicago 7

Will Win: Promising Young Woman

Should Win: Sound of Metal

For better and worse, few Oscar categories favor hot potatoes over square pegs as reliably as this one. And no nominee this year has spawned as many think pieces as Promising Young Woman, a stealth contender here whose victory was all but assured when Aaron Sorkin, the early favorite and prior winner for his Social Network script, failed to secure a directing nod.


One Night in Miami

Best Original Song

  • “Fight for You,” Judas and the Black Messiah
  • “Hear My Voice,” The Trial of the Chicago 7
  • “Husavik,” Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
  • “Io Sì (Seen),” The Life Ahead
  • “Speak Now,” One Night in Miami

Will Win: “Speak Now,” One Night in Miami

Should Win: “Husavik,” Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

For the fourth year in a row, someone is nominated for both an acting award and for co-writing an original song, and to be honest that might be enough to push Leslie Odom Jr. and Sam Ashworth’s “Speak Now” past the category’s other carbon-copy social-justice ballads, “Hear My Voice” and “Fight for You.” And even though Eurovision Song Contest’s “Husavik” deserves the award in this lineup, it’s only because “Jaja Ding Dong” didn’t make the cut. Or, as Michael Musto more succinctly wrote in the recrudescent Village Voice print edition, “Who cares?”

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