FINAL 2025 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR

In what’s been the top Oscar race without a true frontrunner for most of the season now finds itself like every competition, we have a two-horse race in Best Picture that will go right down to the opening of the envelope.

Anora comes in with the heat of PGA and DGA while Conclave has BAFTA and SAG. Anora also has WGA (in original) where Conclave was not eligible but I think it’s safe to say, for argument’s sake, that had it been it would have won there too. Purely from a statistical standpoint, the advantage here is Anora and by a good margin. The only example we have of this split in the expansion era of Best Picture (both at the Oscars and PGA) is The Shape of Water vs Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2017. We even have the snubbed director element aligning Three Billboards and Conclave. But Three Billboards came into the Oscars much stronger than Conclave, running the board with two acting wins, something Conclave had zero success with this season and isn’t expected to suddenly turn around on Sunday. Yes, I’ve seen some of those predictions for an Earth-shaking upset by Isabella Rossellini in supporting and to that I say, I wish you well.

When looking at races through an historical and statistical lens, while anything before 2009 can be anecdotal, it’s not going to accurately reflect the difference in number of Best Picture nominees and the preferential ballot that now exists. We can’t let it sidetrack the reality of now with ‘but Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan with SAG and BAFTA!’ because even BAFTA of 1998 is definitely not the BAFTA of now, or SAG for that matter. Every year is its own year, with baggage, drama, social and political upheaval, crazy campaigns, imploding campaigns and tide shifts that you can see and feel in real time.

1917 is the last film to win both Best Film and Best British Film at the BAFTAs and before that it was The King’s Speech. Each ended up on a very different road on Oscar night. Conclave won both earlier this month but, unlike 1917 and The King’s Speech, lost PGA and DGA. Its strength only lies in that SAG win, but it has the path, albeit a narrow one, to succeed against the odds with an all but secure screenplay win and possibly (likely?) editing. Is it enough?

My thought about Anora at this point in the season, and through most of it (it’s been in my top 3 since last summer alongside Conclave) is that it finds itself in the most envious of positions for Best Picture, as both an underdog and the frontrunner. Winning PGA (and DGA, really) never fit into the idea of ‘here’s how Anora can win.’ If anything, Anora is the type of film that win Best Picture without PGA. Look at examples where the PGA winner was subverted at the Oscars by the less traditional winner, namely La La Land losing to Moonlight and 1917 losing to Parasite. Now, it’s fair to say that both of those winners ere historical markers for the Academy: the first Black-led and directed Best Picture winner with an all-Black cast (and LGBTQ-forward subject) and the first non-English language winner. Anora doesn’t have that historical context but it’s also far from a ‘traditional’ winner, a moniker we can really all but start to erase now with the kinds of films that have won Best Picture over the last ten years. That puts Conclave, which by all estimations feels like a consensus choice pick, has very topical relevancy, in an interesting position. Are the roles reversed here? Is Conclave the progressive pick? I can see that. I can see how some voters would feel like their choice of Conclave is a political one, but one that’s non-divisive while still being a centric Democrat’s version of progressive.

With Berger not in the director race and Brady Corbet seemingly out of it completely despite Golden Globe and BAFTA wins, those predicting Conclave to win are also predicting Baker to win directing. That starts to put Anora in a strange position of potentially only winning that, or directing and screenplay, or Madison if you think she’s winning. So is Anora this year’s The Power of the Dog? No, because Jane Campion swept those director wins and it was always happening. Is Anora going to play out like Brokeback Mountain, Traffic, A Place in the Sun, A Letter to Three Wives, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Informer, Bad Girl and 7th Heaven? If it hasn’t happened in the expanded era of Best Picture, why would it now?

Only three films have won both the Palme d’Or and the Best Picture Oscar: Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, Delbert Mann‘s Marty, and Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite and only Mann also won DGA…until Sean Baker for Anora.

I want to take a minute to present where and why I think the race really changed and why The Brutalist, after its top wins at the Golden Globes and perceived soft frontrunner status, crumbled. Early on, the overriding narrative of Brady Corbet’s epic saga was the marvel of him being able to make it for just $10M, but it came at, well, a price. The film was entirely in Hungary, standing in for Philadelphia. It’s not an entirely unique thing to do, several films are shot in Eastern Europe to help curb budgets. Oscar nominees Dune: Part Two and Maria made use of the country’s tax breaks and massive soundstages. But it became almost an entire personality of the film’s lore itself, as did word that the labor used, or overused, exploiting what are also lax labor and union laws. I think something about that clicked with directors and producers as the industry was still reeling from double strikes on top of a worldwide pandemic. Then, if the city couldn’t suffer any more, the historically devastating fires in January brought tinseltown to another halt. All of these events pushed LA to its limits but also, as with most tragedies or catastrophes, it brought the city together. But it was DGA President Lesli Linka Glatter’s DGA Awards opening speech that clinched it for me. Hammering home that they need to“Bring production back to the United States, and bring it back in force.” Glatter, who lost her home in the fires, emphasized that, following years of turmoil caused by the strikes, pandemic, and recent wildfires, now is the time to “reinvest and recommit” to the communities and workers who built our industry — Directors and their teams, Actors, Writers, IA crews, and Teamsters. She continued, saying “I urge you to insist that your projects be shot where they are set,” Glatter said. “If it’s California, demand to shoot in California, and the same is true for New York, Illinois, Georgia, Mexico… If we all commit to work together, bringing jobs back home to where they are most needed to our city of angels, which has been forced to its knees.” The crowd roared with enthusiastic praise and thunderous applause. It was at that moment I knew, that at least on this side of the pond, it was over for Corbet and indeed, Sean Baker was the (then) shocking winner who then literally minutes later and a mile away would then win the PGA. Oscar winner voting began just three days later. Sometimes momentum can be a false flag but sometimes it’s real and the only thing we have.

Here are my final 2025 Oscar predictions in Best Picture and Best Director for the 97th Academy Awards.

BEST PICTURE

BEST DIRECTOR

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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), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) 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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