2024 Gotham Awards nominations have been announced...what do they mean for award season?

The Gotham Awards, dedicated to recognizing independent cinema, have existed for 33 years. Over that time, they've developed a reputation for being one of the first major award shows to announce nominations for award season. That trend continues this year, with the Gotham Awards announcing their nominees weeks before other early award season harbingers like the National Board of Review's Top Ten Films of the Year. This year's nominations have been revealed and can be read here. The nominees for Best Picture are Challengers, Nickel Boys, Babygirl, Anora, and A Different Man. Superb 2024 titles like Green Border and Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell broke into Best International Feature alongside movies I haven't seen yet like All We Imagine as Light, Hard Truths, and Vermiglio.

How amazing, by the way, to see The People's Joker filmmaker Vera Drew nominated for Breakthrough Director. Once upon a time, it looked doubtful The People's Joker would ever see the light of day thanks to endless legal battles...now its filmmaker is getting her rightful recognition! What an incredible outcome! Also super neat to see Clarence Maclin and Katy O'Brian nominated in Best Supporting Performance for Sing Sing and Love Lies Bleeding, respectively. If there had been room for some Hundreds of Beavers love in here, one might assume I'd picked these nominees out!

Understandably, some folks will be poking through the tea leaves of these nominees scouring for any hints at what could be emerging as major 2024-2025 hits. Given that this ceremony awards indie cinema first and foremost (though last year's removal of a budget cap on potential nominees changed that), many Best Feature Gotham Award nominees haven't lined up with Best Picture Oscar nominees. If only Before Midnight, Inside Llewyn Davis, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Old Joy had scored Best Picture Oscar nods!

However, in recent years, some intersection between Best Picture Oscar and Gotham Award Best Feature nominees has existed. Typically, though, one film from each Gotham Award Best Feature pack (Past Lives, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Nomadland, The Favourite, etc.) has made it to the Best Picture Oscar race. However, for a while there, multiple Best Feature nominees did get into the Best Picture nominees. The 26th and 27th Gotham Awards each saw two Best Feature nominated films go on to land Best Picture Oscar nominations. The 20th Gotham Awards, meanwhile, saw three Best Feature nominees go on to secure Best Picture Oscar nominations.

Right now, out of the five Best Feature nominees at the 34th Annual Gotham Awards, Anora (which I'm FINALLY seeing) is unquestionably the one most likely to get a Best Picture Oscar nomination. Heck, it's even got some buzz about being a possible winner in that category, though it'll be months before we'll know how likely or unlikely those odds are. The most recent Palme d'Or winner seems poised to score a Best Picture Oscar nomination at the very least, though. Nickel Boys (my personal favorite movie of 2024 so far), meanwhile, is the only other one of these nominees I see having a Best Picture Oscar shot.

That's not a reflection of my personal feelings or how much I'm anticipating/dreading certain movies. Award season stuff is cynical and often motivated by factors far beyond artistic merit. Babygirl and Challengers are more mainstream plays, their heavy emphasis on sex will likely scare away Oscar voters. Meanwhile, the terrific dark comedy A Different Man is probably a tad too small to get much Best Picture momentum. That leaves Anora and Nickel Boys as the most likely Best Picture Oscar contenders here.

One other larger award season 2024-2025 thought here: it's fascinating that Emilia Perez didn't get a single nomination here (it couldn't contend for Best Feature, but it could get nominated in any other category). A lot of major outlets like The Hollywood Reporter and Variety have that as a Best Picture Oscar frontrunner right now. However, its more divisive post-Cannes critical response and its lack of Gotham Awards nominations suggest the latest Jacques Audiard movie may have some challenges ahead. Still, it's early in the season, perhaps Perez will shine soon.

Infinitely more important than any award season speculation blabbering, though, is the movies nominated here. Please, go through the list of nominees with fine-toothed comb and check out some motion pictures you've never heard of before! I'm certainly going to make an extra effort to catch up on Gotham-nominated titles like Black Dog and Good One after today! The world of cinema is an amazingly endless one full of exciting new titles to watch. Let today's 34th Gotham Awards nominations point you in some compelling directions for your future moviegoing experiences. You really can't go wrong with movies as top-caliber as Nickel Boys and The People's Joker!