Nida Faraz comments on nominations for the biggest event in the cine world
The 94th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will honor the best films released between 1 March and 31 December 2021 and is scheduled to take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood Los Angeles on 27 March 2022 hosted by Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall. Shortlists of films to compete for nominations in ten categories were announced on 21 December 2021. The nominations were announced on 8 February 2022 and it will be the first time since the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011 that the ceremony will feature multiple hosts.
The Power of the Dog became the first film directed by a woman to receive more than ten nominations while its director, Jane Campion became the first woman to receive more than one Academy Award nomination for Best Director. CODA became the first film from Apple Original Films and starring a predominantly deaf cast in leading roles, to be nominated for Best Picture; among the cast, Troy Kotsur became the first deaf male actor to receive a nomination for an acting award in the category of Best Supporting Actor and is also the second deaf actor overall to receive an acting nomination, after CODA co-star Marlee Matlin who won in the Best Actress category for Children of a Lesser God in 1986.
Drive My Car became the first Japanese film to be nominated for Best Picture while its director, Ryusuke Hamaguchi became the third Japanese director to be nominated for Best Director. Flee became the first film to be nominated in the categories of Best Animated Feature, Best International Feature Film, and Best Documentary feature, simultaneously. Kenneth Branagh became the first individual to have been nominated in a total of seven different categories with his nominations in the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay categories for Belfast.
Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story became the second adaptation of the same source material for a previous Best Picture winner to be nominated for the same award, after 1962’s Mutiny on the Bounty. With his Best Picture nod, Spielberg became the most nominated individual in the category with eleven films. Spielberg’s Best Director nomination also makes him the first filmmaker to be nominated in that category in six consecutive decades. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza became MGM’s first fully produced, marketed, and distributed film to be nominated for Best Picture in 33 years after 1988’s Best Picture winner Rain Man.
Having starred in Don’t Look Up and Nightmare Alley, Cate Blanchett became the first female actor in history to have credited roles in nine Best Picture nominees, beating Olivia de Havilland’s record of eight. Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley’s acting nominations for The Lost Daughter mark only the third time that two individuals were nominated for portraying the same character in the same film.
The nominations of Kirsten Stewart (Spencer) and Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) marked the first time that two openly LGBTQ+ actors were nominated in the same year. This also marks the first time in which two couples are nominated in the same year, namely married couple Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem (Cruz for Parallel Mothers and Bardem for Being the Ricardos); as well as engaged couple Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, both for the Power of the Dog; their collective nominations notably span all four acting categories.
This ceremony also marks the first time in the preferential era and the second time since the 78th Academy Awards in 2006 that all of the nominees in the Best Actress category did not star in one of the films nominated for Best Picture. Furthermore, this also marks the first time in the award’s history that none of the Best Actress nominees were nominated in the same category at the British Academy Film Awards.
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