Oscars 2025: What you need to know about this years film awards
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At the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, Zoe Saldana took home Best Supporting Actress for Amelia Perez, a film in which she plays a lawyer who helps a Mexican drug lord disappear and undergo gender-affirming surgery. And at the Golden Globes just a few weeks earlier, Demi Moore won Best Actress for The Substance, in which she plays a woman who injects herself with a mysterious serum that promises a younger, better version of herself. Things soon go horribly wrong.

Movies like these may be fictional, but they're watched by people in the real world. This year's awards season is unfolding as Los Angeles recovers from devastating wildfires, as Catholics around the world pray for the hospitalized pope, and as President Trump moves swiftly to reshape American policy at home and abroad. News and politics are on many people's minds, and that may be influencing what they watch and how they perceive it.

So on today's episode, we're looking at the topics that have got people talking this awards season and sharing what you need to know ahead of the Oscars this Sunday. I'm William Lee Adams, and this is What in the World from the BBC World Service.

Here to tell us more is the BBC's entertainment reporter, Yasmin Rufo. Hi. Hello. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming in. So there's been a lot of talk about the relevance and the viewership figures of award shows like the Oscars, the BAFTAs, the Screen Actor Guild Awards.

Besides giving stars a chance to dress up and look nice, what's the point of them? These awards are important because it's not just the big stars that are going to be celebrated. It's not just the actors and directors, but actually there are other people behind the scenes that often never get mentioned or you might not even know who's done the best hair and makeup for your favourite film or you might not know who did...

who put together all the sound for a certain film that you love. So really it's a chance to honour the people behind the scenes as well, like the people who work in costume design, makeup, sound, visual effects and stuff like that. And when we think of Hollywood, we think of money. Is there a financial motive here as well?

Of course, you know, they bring in big viewers, these shows. People from all around the world tune in to them. You've got the Golden Globes and the Oscars in the US, and then in the UK, the BAFTAs, and lots of people tune in to watch the BAFTAs, which was only a few weeks ago. People are really interested in it. And these other shows besides the Oscars, the SAG Awards, the Golden Globes, they're often considered sort of indicators of how the Oscars might pan out. Can you tell us about the biggest wins so far and which horses are in the lead?

Conclave, which focuses on a group of gossipy and scheming cardinals in Rome, that was the big winner at the SAG Awards and the BAFTA, so they are very much in the running. Emilia Perez also took home four awards at the Golden Globes and the Brutalist won three. So those are the sort of...

Three strongest films, I think, that we could think that they probably will do well at the Oscars, given what's happened. The other film worth mentioning that is in contention for Best Picture is Enora, which has won a string of industry guilds, even though it hasn't won a huge amount of awards at the ceremonies that I just mentioned. But yes, I think in terms of Oscar nominations, you've got Conclave, Emilia Perez, The Brutalist and Enora all in the running.

And there are several categories that seem genuinely too close to call. My personal favorite is the animated feature category with Flo, a Latvian film about a black cat sort of surviving a flood. And it's up against big Hollywood studios like Disney, Pixar. But putting that to the side, I'm curious, which categories stick out to you in terms of competitiveness?

For me, the biggest category this year is Best Actress. It is so close to call. It's basically a dead heat between newcomer Mikey Madison, that won Best Actress at the BAFTAs, and Demi Moore for The Substance, which is sort of a body horror film. She won the award at the Golden Globe. So both of these two women have picked up a big award.

They are in very close contention. Demi Moore obviously has never won an Oscar. It's been this massive thing that she's been an actress for so many decades yet never won big awards. And then you've got someone like Mikey Madison, who pretty much before this year was a total unknown. So two very different women competing for this prize. And that kind of leads me to my next question about the movie Amelia Perez. Now, it stars a transgender actress. And for a time, she was sort of the underdog story. And yet...

There's been a turn and this film, which has been celebrated, is also among the most controversial. Could you tell us why is this movie generating so much discussion? It's obviously been in the press a lot because, as you mentioned, one of the film's actors, Carla Sofia Gascon, she's been embroiled in some controversy over past social media posts. And obviously, like you mentioned, she is one of she's the first openly transgender person to be nominated in the Best Actress category. So

It was a huge deal for her, a huge deal for the film. And I think the film is very different to a lot of other films nominated this year, not least because it's a musical, but also the topics and the themes it addresses. Even before the controversy around Carlos Fier Gascon, there were already very opposing views. Some people absolutely love it. Some people can't stand it. And then I think you throw this into the mix as well. It's caused a lot of tension.

In terms of wider representation, though, this year, I mean, it's not great, I would say. In terms of nominees, the Substance Director is actually the only woman nominated in the directing category. And out of the 10 titles up for Best Picture, there is only one, The Substance, which has been directed by a woman. Last year, three...

And from one controversy to another, we turn to artificial intelligence, AI. What role is that playing in some of this year's nominated films?

Yeah, so interestingly this year, AI has caused some controversy, particularly with The Brutalist and Emilia Perez, both around the use of voice cloning. Both of the directors, when they've spoken about AI, say that the use of AI hasn't significantly changed significantly.

the film. It's not like they were using ChatGPT to come up with the script. Well, as far as we know. But they're not saying this whole film was made of AI. All the actors are AI. They're using AI to enhance certain aspects. And one of the things I love is that this year in awards season, Heretic, which is a horror film starring Hugh Grant, actually ended its film with the credits saying no generative AI was used in the making of this film. So you can tell it really is a controversial issue.

We'll hear more from Yasmin in a minute, but let's go into the controversy of using AI in films a little bit further.

I know it seems that everyone goes on about artificial intelligence these days, but it is a genuine topic of discussion during this year's awards season. Here's Dominic Lees, who is a professor of film and television at the University of Reading in the UK. So what exactly is AI voice cloning, and how has it been used in films such as The Brutalist and Amelia Perez? Voice cloning is a use of AI in which the algorithm learns the qualities of someone's voice.

so that it can later deliver voice outputs that sound exactly like that person speaking. The user can then type in text that the AI will deliver a spoken word in the voice of that target person. The editor of the film The Brutalists, David Yancho, used voice cloning AI to improve the Hungarian vowels of the movie stars, which was the American actor Adrian Brody and the British actress Felicity Jones.

They play Hungarian Jewish emigrants to the USA after the Second World War, and some of the dialogue is in Hungarian. David Yancho, the editor, was himself Hungarian, so knew that he could improve their voices and make those difficult Hungarian vowels perfect. That's why he used AI. The film Amelia Perez is a musical, so it was a slightly different case. What was really interesting here was the use of voice cloning in singing.

Carla Sofia Gascon is the star, and she sings all her numbers, but a few parts of the score were out of her vocal range. So the sound designer, Cyril Holtz, worked with an AI company called Respeecher to create a voice clone of Carla Sofia Gascon.

This enabled him to edit into the recording small amounts of the AI clone of Gascon's voice when the music stretched beyond her range. And the production's alternative would have been to find a different actor to voice double the numbers instead of having the star herself sing. Disclosure is a responsibility for anyone using AI in the creative industries.

Audiences have to know if what they're watching is real or has it been manipulated by AI. With the Oscars, they will soon make it compulsory for a competing movie to declare if it has used AI at all and how they've used it. So transparency is the key thing. Audiences need transparency from the filmmakers so that they know what they're watching.

Thank you, Dominic. So, Yasmin, earlier we mentioned the film Conclave, which is, of course, about the death of the Pope and the conclave to choose the Pope's successor. This film seems incredibly timely now, with the news that the current Pope is in fact ill. How big of a role do you think that news and real world events plays when voters are making their decisions? It doesn't make a huge impact.

ultimately Conclave was filmed long before we ever found out that the Pope was unwell. It's very fictional in terms of the scandals and conspiracies in the film. So there are very few parallels between what goes on in the film and what is happening right now with the Pope. And the other thing that's worth saying is that voting for the Oscars closed about a week ago and

sort of matches up with the time that we knew the Pope was ill. So really people will have cast their votes by now. So even if the Pope continues to get progressively worse or we hear further news, there isn't a chance really for people to change their votes and push Conclave up to win the big awards. And what about broader political wins? Do you think that the political climate can impact how viewers perceive and then vote for films? Politically,

politics always has a bit of an impact when it comes to award seasons I think you notice more and more that award seasons try and almost move away from being political I think in recent years you kind of see them trying to put politics to one side maybe kind of just champion the big fun films and I think this year as well as last year with Barbie and Oppenheimer it's

A lot of it is about escapism. I think there's so much going on in the world that when it comes to films, the films that are being championed or the films that people want to celebrate are the ones that just offered you that escapism. You know, you've got the likes of Wicked that are actually leading the Oscar nominations with 13 nominations.

that's just a total fantasy film that allows you for two hours and 40 minutes to just forget about the real world so yes politics plays a part but I think given how much politics there is in the world right now people just sort of want to forget it when it comes to awards season and

And you mentioned some big blockbusters there. Wicked and Dune, part two, they're both up for awards. Do you think that their commercial success influenced the fact that they got nominations in the first place? I always think it's so interesting when it comes to big blockbuster films and how they're represented at awards season because historically there's always been a bit of a tension between the films that everyone's talking about in a scene compared to the smaller films that a lot of people might not have even heard of.

yet are up for a lot of nominations, like something like Amelia Perez, where actually a lot of people probably haven't watched Amelia Perez, but it's leading a lot of the nominations.

Obviously, there have been efforts to try and change this. So at the Golden Globes, for example, there's a Cinematic and Box Office Achievement Awards. And that's specifically as an award for the films that have done well at the box office. So this year, Wicked won the award and there were other big hits like Deadpool and Wolverine and Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice nominated. And what's interesting is when you look at films like Deadpool and Wolverine, it's not nominated anywhere else.

even though it's a film that it felt like everyone was talking about it. Big cast, big names, big movie. So essentially in some award ceremonies, there are specific categories that really allow the big blockbusters to get their moment in the spotlight because often they're not really credited. Yasmin Rufo, BBC culture reporter. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's all for today. Thanks for listening to another episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm William Lee Adams. We'll see you again soon. Bye.