2026 saw a very good, very genre heavy group of Academy Award finalists and there are some real gems at every level of the field. Alasdair Stuart takes a look at the movies he’s seen, the winners we got and the gems not to miss.

Before we get start, a short note about Documentaries. Given our focus here is on fiction we’re not going to be looking at those categories but you should. We’ll have a link at the bottom of the article to where you can find them.

Best Live Action Short

This was a tie between The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva. The Oscars don’t tend to do ties, so this was a pleasant surprise. The Singers is a largely improvised short that riffs on TikTok culture, male loneliness and a Russian short story. It’s technically great but didn’t land for me, your mileage will vary. Two people Exchanging Saliva is a black and white piece of dystopian SF about a culture where intimacy is outlawed and what happens when two women flaunt that. It’s very good, and very grim and on YouTube. Think Alphaville and 1984 by way of Portrait of a Lady On Fire.

Best Animated Short

The Girl Who Cried Pearls is an incredible, unsettling stop motion short told in flashback by an old man to his granddaughter and feels very solidly in the modern fairy tale school. This entire short list is genre heavy, with Forevergreen, about the bond between a bear cub and an evergreen tree, and Retirement Plan about a man’s plans to actually live, particular standouts. Forevergreen will make you cry, be prepared.

Best Costume Design

Kate Hawley picks up the win here for Frankenstein and it’s deserved. Oscar Isaac’s gothic rock star look alone was an incredible piece of design. Again though this is a category crammed with brilliance. In particular, Ruth E Carter’s use of colour and fabric on Sinners and Deborah L Scott’s careful worldbuilding in Avatar: Fire & Ash.

Best Make-Up & Hairstyling

Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey won for Frankenstein and again, richly deserved. I’d also recommend checking out Ken Diaz, Mike Fontain and Shunika Terry’s work on Sinners and hear very good things about The Ugly Stepsister, which Thomas Foldberg and Anne Cathrine Sauerberg were nominated for and which is about to come out from Second Sight.

Best Casting

A new category! And a good one too! Again, Sinners is a standout here with Francine Maisler working miracles with the casting. Likewise Nina Gold’s work on Hamnet. I know very little about The Secret Agent but want to see it and Gabriel Domingues’ work on it looks excellent. The win here went to Cassandra Kulukundis for One Battle After Another for good reason.

Best Production Design

Hannah Beachler and Monique Champagne did stunning work for Sinners and I’m honestly gutted it didn’t pick up this win. That being said, it’s another strong field and Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau did incredible work for Frankenstein, the winner.

Best Visual Effects

Some pleasant surprises in this one! The Lost Bus is a largely overlooked Apple TV movie and it’s worth checking out. Charlie Noble, David Zaretti, Russell Bowen & Brandon K McLaughlin did great work showing the scale and geography of the devastating fire at the core of the movie.

Elsewhere on the list, David Vicker, Stephen Aplin, Charmaine Chan and Neil Corbould found new fun things to say with ‘Let’s never go back to Dinosaur Island’ in Jurassic World Rebirth, and Ryan Tudhope, Nicolas Chevallier, Robert Harrington and Keith Dawson did incredible work on F1, putting us inside the car even if the script sometimes didn’t quite seem to be there with us. Michael Ralla, Espen Nordahl, Guido Wolter and Donnie Dean did incredible work for Sinners, especially on how realistic everything seemed. But honestly, you can’t deny Avatar: Fire & Ash’s technical skill. Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett did brilliant work bringing Pandora to life.

Best Sound

The F1 team picked up the win here, with Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A Rizzo and Juan Peralta doing sincerely brilliant work using sound to move us around the screen. The other teams here were all vastly impressive too, especially José Antonio García, Christopher Scarabosio and Tony Villaflor for One Battle After Another and Chris Welcker, Benjamin A Burtt, Felipe Pacheco, Brandon Proctor and Steve Boeddeker for Sinners but I understand why F1 got this.

Best Editing

Andy Jurgenson won this for One Battle After Another and I’m a little conflicted for a very surprising reason. So much of that movie works because of how long the shots are, especially the mind-blowing final chase. That’s the exact opposite to how we’re conditioned to view editing so it feels odd. But the more I think about it, the more I understand the cognitive dissonance. Of the others that I’ve seen, once again Sinners impressed too thanks to the work of Michael P Shawver.

Best Cinematography

Here’s how the American Film Institute defines cinematography.

‘Cinematography is the art and craft of capturing moving images using a film or digital camera. In narrative films and television shows, cinematography tells a visual story through light, colour, choice of camera lens, the way the camera moves through the scene and what is included or focused on in the frame.’

Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s work on Sinners is staggeringly good in this regard. If nothing else, as others have joked, it’s a movie that largely happens at night where you can see everything that’s happening. But the entire movie is a masterpiece, especially the music sequences. So happy to see this.

The others I saw on this list impressed too, most notable Michael Bauman’s agonising, locked off tension and bleached sunshine in One Battle After Another and Dan Lausten’s fondness for putting us just over Oscar Isaac’s shoulder in Frankenstein.

Best Original Score

Ludwig Goransson is amazing and I’m delighted to see him get the win here. Of the others, I don’t know Jerskin Fendrix’s work but Alexandre Desplat and Jonny Greenwood did very good work on Frankenstein and One Battle After Another. Finally, while I’ve not seen Hamnet, Max Richter doesn’t know how to do bad work. Check all of them out.

Best Original Song

HUNTRIX DON’T MISS! DELIGHTED to see KPop Demon Hunters get the first of its two wins here. How It’s Done is my jam but Golden is iconic. Would have loved to see Raphael Saadiq and Ludwing Goransson get the win for Sinners too but understand completely why Golden got the win.

Best Adapted Screenplay

One Battle After Another is genre fiction. It’s dusty, normal person cyberpunk full of tired people doing their best and terrible people doing their worst. It gets the win here because it’s inspired by Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon is the Joseph Heller of his time, fiercely literary and wilfully obtuse but often very funny. I don’t emotionally connect with One Battle, or Pynchon, but I do get it intellectually and I’m pleased it got the win. And again, the others here were all very good. I haven’t seen Bugonia, Train Dreams or Hamnet yet but I hear good thing about Will Tracy, Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar and Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell’s work on them while Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is, as always, great,

Best Original Screenplay

I know almost nothing about It Was Just An Accident, Blue Moon and Sentimental Value but a cursory look at the trailers makes me want to check out all three. Marty Supreme is a movie that’s been badly hurt for me by using Kevin O’Leary, a right-wing venture capitalist whose first response about his time on the movie was asking if extras couldn’t be replaced by AI. People like that, or who employ people like that, don’t deserve my time or money.

Sinners on the other hand! It really is a stunningly good movie, and Ryan Coogler’s script boils with meaning, implication and characters. It’s a story about horror, survival, culture, music as immortality and what happens when the song just seems… off. I loved it, I’d have loved it to sweep the field but I’m so happy it got this award especially.

Best Animated Feature

There’s an expectation with some awards that they’ll always go to the same place and that expectation still hangs over this award despite it being won for four years now by something outside the usual channels. Animation seems to be in an increasingly good place in western cinema and it’s an enormous pleasure to see KPop Demon Hunters get the win. Not just because it’s great (and it is) but because it’s something new. Also, given the recent series of rakes Pixar has stood on, especially with the ongoing scandals at the office and the amazingly bad, tone deaf comments Pete Doctor made about Elio, the win feels extra deserved.

Of the other entrants, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain is an independently produced, beautiful looking adaptation of a novella about a little girl returning to her life after being born in a vegetative state. Arco, meanwhile, is a French movie about a time travelling boy from the future who explores the past and bonds with a young girl there. They both look excellent and it’s great to see this category continue to be so diverse and fun.

Best Director

Paul Thomas Anderson picked up the win here. It’s a strong field, with the only other genre entry being Sinners, which is also (as we’ve mentioned once or twice at this point), superb.

Best Supporting Actor

This one is a stupidly tough field. Both Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro are excellent in One Battle After Another and honestly I think del Toro gives the better performance as a doggedly kind community organiser. Elsewhere in the category, I don’t know Sentimental Value but Stellan Skarsgård is always very good. Jacob Elordi is fantastic in Frankenstein but honestly, if I had to pick a winner here it would be Delroy Lindo in Sinners. In a movie full of superb performances, Lindo’s wildly complex character is a standout.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Madigan! What a performance! Madigan is absolutely incredible in Weapons. It’s a monstrous performance that somehow also feels grounded and realistic and makes the movie. Elsewhere in the field, Teyana Taylor plays similar beats in One Battle After Another and Wunmi Mosaku adds vital humanity and pragmatism to Sinners. All fantastic work.

Best Actor

DiCaprio is very good in One Battle After Another and vanishes into the role and behind those gloriously bad sunglasses. But Michael B Jordan worked magic in Sinners. Not just playing two different men but playing them in a way that felt seamless and organic and that spotlit the themes of the movie. Jordan’s work is a massive reason why Sinners is so good and I’m so happy he got the win here.

Best Actress

Another relentlessly strong category and I hear nothing but good things about Emma Stone’s typically fearless work in Bugonia. But Jessie Buckley picking this up for Hamnet is really good to see, especially given she’s the first Irish actress to win an Oscar.

Best Film

One of the best things the Academy has ever done is open up this category. This is a pretty solid slice of 2025’s best movies. F1 is the least interesting of the ones I’ve seen but still technically breathtaking and Frankenstein and Bugonia both being here speak loudly to genre being mainstream now. I’d have loved Sinners to get this one, I think it deserves it. But One Battle After Another speaks intellectually to the time the way Sinners emotionally does. It’s a great film, and a worthy winner. But for me, Sinners is better.

 

And those are your winners! You’ll find resources on where to see them and the other finalists below and please do. There’s some amazing work out there that deserves to be seen even if it didn’t pick up a win on Sunday night.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c33jkvmzl4ko

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/2026-oscar-nominated-shorts-how-to-watch-what-will-win-little-gold-men?srsltid=AfmBOopaoK-eJ0Zr-80WKQyGYZ5BbPSpGI7GWA4RsLOp2tfgKSs8DBO8

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/mar/09/pixar-chief-lgbtq-plot-cut-elio-not-therapy-pete-docter

https://variety.com/2018/film/news/pixar-boys-club-john-lasseter-cassandra-smolcic-1202858982/

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