FINAL 2023 Oscar Predictions: ANIMATED FEATURE, DOCUMENTARY FEATURE and INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

With the Annie, BAFTA, Critics’ Choice, Golden Globe and Producers Guild under its belt, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is one of the most solid bets on Oscar night, barring a shocking upset. It will mark the first win for Netflix in this category and del Toro’s third Oscar win overall and in his third category (he previously Best Picture and Best Director for 2017’s The Shape of Water).

The road to the Documentary Feature Oscar has taken several turns leading up to now. With several varied precursors over several months, Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, a contemplative tale of two brothers rescuing a bird called the Black Kite in the midst of turmoil of violence and smog-choked air of Delhi, the film earned early wins from the International Documentary Association and Cinema Eye Honors and also landed nominations from the Directors Guild, Producers Guild and BAFTA. Sara Dosa claimed the DGA for her lava love story Fire of Love, detailing the story of scientists and lovers Katia and Maurice Krafft, who died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together. Then, in the final weeks of the season we have Navalny, Daniel Roher’s absorbing story of Alexei Navalny, the Russian rebel of Vladamir Putin who was poisoned by his opposition and lived to tell the tale, swooped in with BAFTA and PGA wins that are likely to carry it to a win.

International Feature Film is fascinating in that the film that likely could have taken it all isn’t even nominated here. India’s RRR won Critics’ Choice and was nominated for the Golden Globe but the country’s Oscar submission committee didn’t send it, opting for The Last Film Show (a film in the vein of Cinema Paradiso), which made the shortlist but failed to earn a nomination. With that, we still have one of the strongest lineups in years but the absolute breakaway hit that All Quiet on the Western Front was on Oscar nomination morning (earning nine total) and with the entire Academy membership voting, this should be an easy win. It will mark the second Netflix film to triumph here (after 2018’s Roma) and the first for Germany since 2006’s The Lives of Others.

Here are my final 2023 Oscar winner predictions for Animated Feature, Documentary Feature and International Feature Film.

ANIMATED FEATURE

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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