From Sinners to Hamnet to BU’s Nominees, This Year’s Oscar Race Could Offer Lots of Surprises
CFA’s Harvey Young and COM’s Debbie Danielpour offer predictions on who will win and who got snubbed ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards Ceremony
The films nominated for this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture. Photos via IMDb
From Sinners to Hamnet to BU’s Nominees, This Year’s Oscar Race Could Offer Lots of Surprises
CFA’s Harvey Young and COM’s Debbie Danielpour offer predictions on who will win and who got snubbed ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards Ceremony
This article was originally published in BU Today on March 12, 2026. By John O’Rourke
EXCERPT
Even before a single envelope has been opened at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, March 15, this year’s Oscars race is already proving to be historic. And Boston University will be well represented, too. Ryan Coogler’s supernatural horror film Sinners notched 16 nominations, 2 more than the record held by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. Chloé Zhao became the first person of color to be nominated twice for best director for helming Hamnet (she won in 2021 for Nomadland). And for the first time in years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has added a new competitive category, achievement in casting.
Meanwhile, BU alum Josh Safdie (COM’07) is up for four Academy Awards—best picture, best director, best original screenplay, and best achievement in film editing for Marty Supreme. And another BU alum, Andrew E. Freedman (CAS’78), has been nominated for best animated short film for Retirement Plan.
BU Today spoke with two film experts—Harvey Young, dean of the College of Fine Arts and a College of Arts & Sciences professor of English, and Debbie Danielpour, a screenwriter and a College of Communication assistant professor of film and television and director of COM’s Cinematheque series, for their insights on the awards.
Q&A
with Harvey Young and Debbie Danielpour
BU Today: Sinners earned 16 nominations, but it’s a supernatural horror film, a genre the Academy often overlooks. What was it about this film that resonated with Academy voters?
Harvey Young: It’s a perfect storm of goodness: dashing lead actor, auteur director who’s clearly the next Spielberg (Hon.’09), a high art film with vampires.
Debbie Danielpour: It’s true, only six or seven horror films have ever been nominated for Best Picture in Academy history, and only Silence of the Lambs (1991) won. Regarding Sinners, I teach a class for screenwriting graduates about American genres and I must say I can’t remember one film with this combination of genres and subjects, a blend that’s been beautifully achieved: Southern Gothic horror/vampire, fantasy, supernatural, and it’s even a historical thriller, set in the 1930s Jim Crow South. But it’s also musician–steeped inAfrican American blues. I think that combination is what resonated…and the fact that it’s an examination of the country’s original sin.
BU Today: What surprised you the most about this year’s nominees?
Young: Surprisingly, the live arts are palpable. There’s Jessie Buckley watching Hamlet in Hamnet; Ethan Hawke, Oklahoma! in Blue Moon; Gwyneth Paltrow, ping-pong in Marty Supreme; Michael B. Jordan watching Buddy Guy playing the blues in Sinners; and everyone watching the art and science of F1 racing in F1. The films are saying “thank you” and “we see you” to their audiences.
Danielpour: I was surprised by four things: first, the number of non–English language films, mainly in the acting categories that were nominated; two, the omission of Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind in any category; three, the fact that Guillermo del Toro didn’t score a directing nomination for Frankenstein, one of my favorite films of the year; and four, that F1 got a best picture nomination. I haven’t seen it after hearing my graduate students’ assessment, but I hear the climax sequence makes it all worth it. Hopefully, some of your readers can convince me to see it.
Surprisingly, the live arts are palpable. There’s Jessie Buckley watching Hamlet in Hamnet; Ethan Hawke, Oklahoma! in Blue Moon; Gwyneth Paltrow, ping-pong in Marty Supreme; Michael B. Jordan watching Buddy Guy playing the blues in Sinners; and everyone watching the art and science of F1 racing in F1. The films are saying “thank you” and “we see you” to their audiences.