Oscar nominations are here! This morning, after being delayed due to the wildfires in L.A., Rachel Sennott and Bowen Yang took the stage at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills to announce which films from the past year will be vying for Academy Awards. Among the top nominees is “The Brutalist,” the three-and-a-half-hour epic about a fictional Holocaust survivor and architect, with 10 nominations. Meanwhile, “A Complete Unknown,” the Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, received eight nominations. (One of these nominations went to dark-horse contender Monica Barbaro, who seemingly just edged out Jewish actress Jamie Lee Curtis for a spot in the Best Supporting Actress category.)
But these weren’t the only films with Jewish connections to score nods from the Academy. “Anora,” which is predominantly set within the heavily Russian-Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach came away with five nominations. Jesse Eisenberg’s darkly hilarious Holocaust road trip movie “A Real Pain” received two nominations. “September 5,” a movie about the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. And “No Other Land,” a documentary made by an Israeli-Palestinian filmmaking collective about the Israeli military’s orders to destroy the Palestinian West Bank village of Masafer Yatta, was nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film. Individually, Jewish producer Marc Platt, father of Ben, is nominated for producing Best Picture contender “Wicked.”
So, before the ceremony airs on March 2, here are all the big Jewish nominees at the 97th Academy Awards to get excited about:
Best Actor in a Leading Role
Adrien Brody (“The Brutalist”)
Timothée Chalamet (“A Complete Unknown”)
Best Actress in a Leading Role
Mikey Madison (“Anora”)
Best Supporting Actor
Jeremy Strong* (“The Apprentice”)
Best Original Screenplay
Jesse Eisenberg (“A Real Pain”)
Best Original Score
Daniel Blumberg (“The Brutalist”)
Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked“)
Best Original Song
Diane Warren for “The Journey” (The Six Triple Eight)
*Jeremy Strong doesn’t seem to identify as Jewish, however he does have Jewish heritage on his paternal side.