The 2021 Cannes Film Festival’s selections have managed to figure in seven categories of the Oscar nominations that were announced in LA on Tuesday, February 8. They were Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature, Best Directing, and Best Picture.
Drive My Car by Japan’s Ryusuke Hamaguchi, which competed for the Cannes Palm d’Or last year and clinched the Best Screenplay Award from the Spike Lee jury, has gathered four Academy nods – Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature Film and in the top Best Picture category. The Japanese director has also been nominated for Best Direction, and he would be vying for the Oscar along with moviemakers Paul Thomas Anderson, Kenneth Branagh, Jane Campion and Steven Spielberg.
Another Cannes work, Flee by Danish auteur Jonas Poher Rasmussen, has got nominated in no less than three categories, including Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature Film.
The Worst Person in the World by Joachim Trier, which was also part of Cannes 2021 Competition and which won the Best Actress Award for Rofenate Reinsve, now gets nominated in the Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film categories.
The movies in the Cannes official selections collected nine nominations in total and represent three out of the five titles in the Best International Feature Film section that rewards the work of directors coming from around the world.
Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was part of the Cannes 2021 jury, has clinched an Academy nod for her first feature, The Lost Daughter. Olivia Coleman, who headlined this picture, is now in the race for the Best Actress trophy.
Finally, New Zealand director Jane Campion has been nominated for The Power of the Dog, a film that has got 12 Oscar nods. Her association with Cannes goes a long way. In 1993, she became the first woman helmer to win the Palm d’Or for The Piano, a haunting feature about a deaf-mute woman. Campion made history for the second time at Cannes 2014; she became the first ever woman President of the jury.
The Cannes Film Festival’s link with the Academy Awards is getting stronger, and indicates how the selectors have been using their creative imagination and, maybe enormous intuitive ability, to pick works which are not only a visual treat but also come with great stories, narrated with feeling.
