Admittedly, I am historically not very good at this; last year, I got twelve out of the twenty-four correct. This, I suspect, is mainly because while I do follow the awards season narrative each year, I don’t actually retain a lot of it – so I’ve got a broad sense of where momentum has built, but you’d have to be quite charitable to call these predictions ‘educated guesses’, basically.

Still, though, it’s fun, and I figured since I’d probably draw up these predictions either way, I might as well get a blog post out of it. Incidentally, worth noting what the bracketed entries mean – I do these with a friend each year, and it’s three points for your first guess, two for second, one for third. So the brackets are what’s next-most-likely, from my ill-informed vantage point. (A lot of them are just guesses, and a lot of the guesses are based on stuff like “the title of this is neat”. It’s a fairly low-stakes set of predictions. I put money on them once. Won’t be doing that again.)

You can find the full list of nominees here, in case you’re curious about that. Otherwise, my predictions are as follows:

Best Picture – 1917 (Joker, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood)

Best Director – Sam Mendes (Quentin Tarantino, Bong Joon Ho)

Best Actor – Joaquin Phoenix (Adam Driver, Leonardo DiCaprio)

Best Actress – Renee Zellweger (Saoirse Ronan, Charlize Theron)

Best Supporting Actor ­– Brad Pitt (Al Pacino, Joe Pesci)

Best Supporting Actress – Laura Dern (Florence Pugh, Scarlett Johansson)

Original Screenplay – Parasite (Knives Out, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood)

Adapted Screenplay – JoJo Rabbit (Little Women, The Irishman)

International Feature – Parasite (Les Misérables, Pain and Glory)

Animated Feature – Klaus (Toy Story 4, Missing Link)

Documentary – American Factory (For Sama, The Edge of Democracy)

Visual Effects – The Lion King (1917, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker)

Film Editing – Ford v Ferrari (Parasite, Joker)

Original Score – Little Women (Joker, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker)

Original Song – “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again,” Rocketman (“I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away,” Toy Story 4, “Stand Up,” Harriet)

Production Design – Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (1917, Parasite)

Cinematography – 1917 (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, The Irishman)

Costume Design – Little Women (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, JoJo Rabbit)

Makeup and Hair – Bombshell (1917, Judy)

Sound Mixing – 1917 (Ford v Ferrari, Ad Astra)

Sound Editing – 1917 (Ford v Ferrari, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker)

Animated Short – Hair Love (Kitbull, Memorable)

Live-Action Short – The Neighbour’s Window (Nefta Football Club, Saria)

Documentary Short – Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if You’re a Girl) (St. Louis Superman, In the Absence)

I’ve seen far, far fewer of these than I’d like – I’d had plans, vaguely, to review each of the Best Picture nominees in the days leading up to the ceremony, but those plans did not pan out. (So, “who do you want to win” is a little hard to answer, though as ever I default to “give all the awards to Saoirse Ronan and Greta Gerwig”.) If you’re interested, though, you can find what I’ve written about 2019 films here, and 2020 films here.

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