CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – The nominations for the Academy Awards are out and Oscar has his eyes on a record number of movies that were screened at the Virginia Film Festival in October.

“Altogether we have 58 nominations which is an all-time high since we’ve been tracking,” Virginia Film Festival Artistic Director Ilya Tovbis told Cville Right Now. “That’s across 22 different categories in 12 films nominated in one way or another.”

“Frankenstein,” “Hamnet,” “The Secret Agent,” “Sinners” and “Train Dreams,” all of which were shown in Charlottesville during the festival, earned Best Picture nominations, the academy announced Thursday.

“Come See Me In the Good Light” also earned a nomination for Best Documentary Feature Film.

“We’ve been focusing not just on directors and actors, of course we do that, but increasingly also on craft in terms of cinema, hair, makeup, all that kind of thing,” Tovbis said. “So another film at the festival that was very popular that brought home nominations for a lot of those categories was ‘Frankenstein’ with everything from production design, costume design, sound, cinematography and I think anyone who saw it with us at the theater or at home on Netflix will know why.”

“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” the film the festival featured on its opening night, did not receive any nominations, despite early Oscar buzz for lead actor Jeremy Allen White.

Tovbis said they don’t necessarily prognosticate an Oscar nomination when choosing a film such as this for Opening Night.

“There’s so many complexities to sort of how the vote is done and how the body that chooses the voting is changing over the years,” Tovbis said. “And so I wouldn’t say it’s surprising because there’s always a short list of sort of major films like the Springsteen one that don’t get nods though we wish they would, but it’s a difficult process.

“I don’t think it says as much about the film as it does about the industry, so I wouldn’t say I’m surprised.”

Last year’s Best Picture winner “Anora” screened at the VFF, as did 2020 winner “Nomadland.”

Tovbis said the festival included Sinners even though it had been out longer than most films they screen.

“We made an exception for a couple of reasons, the main one is we had an incredible opportunity to bring in Miles Caton who did lovely work as supporting actor and is just a tremendous musician,” he said. “But secondly, I think the reason he was so excited and we were so excited to present it as sort of a reprise screening is it’s a film of the year, of the moment, and I think you’re seeing that obviously with this record-setting number of (16) nominations.

“Even at the time we were booking the festival, we knew it was something truly special and unique that was really going to change the course of filmmaking and filmgoing,” he said.

“Even with the talent of Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, two people that have done tremendously well at the box office pretty much anytime they came up with a new film like ‘Black Panther’ and so forth, there were still a lot of doubters in Hollywood who had this film as too niche, too horror, too focused on African-American culture to be a huge box office hit,” Tovbis said. “All the doubters were proven wrong almost immediately which was because the film really captured the moment, and rather than being pushed into a corner in any of the genres, it truly transcended.

“It managed to pull in rather than exclude people,” Tovbis concluded.

Here’s the full list of this year’s nominees:

 

Best picture

Bugonia
F1
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Train Dreams

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
Delroy Lindo, Sinners
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

Performance by an actress in a leading role

Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Emma Stone, Bugonia

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
Amy Madigan, Weapons
Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Best animated feature film

Arco
Elio
KPop Demon Hunters
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Zootopia 2

Best animated short film

Butterfly
Forevergreen
The Girl Who Cried Pearls
Retirement Plan
The Three Sisters

Achievement in cinematography

Frankenstein
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Train Dreams

Achievement in costume design

Avatar: Fire and Ash
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
Sinners

Achievement in directing

Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Ryan Coogler, Sinners

Best documentary feature film

The Alabama Solution
Come See Me in the Good Light
Cutting Through Rocks
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
The Perfect Neighbor

Best documentary short film

All the Empty Rooms
Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud
Children No More: Were and Are Gone
The Devil Is Busy
Perfectly a Strangeness

Achievement in film editing

F1
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
Sentimental Value
Sinners

Best international feature film

The Secret Agent, Brazil
It Was Just an Accident, France
Sentimental Value, Norway
Sirāt, Spain
The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisia

Achievement in casting

Hamnet, Nina Gold
Marty Supreme, Jennifer Venditti
One Battle after Another, Cassandra Kulukundis
The Secret Agent, Gabriel Domingues
Sinners, Francine Maisler

Achievement in makeup and hairstyling

Frankenstein, Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey
Kokuho, Kyoko Toyokawa, Naomi Hibino and Tadashi Nishimatsu
Sinners, Ken Diaz, Mike Fontaine and Shunika Terry
The Smashing Machine, Kazu Hiro, Glen Griffin and Bjoern Rehbein
The Ugly Stepsister, Thomas Foldberg and Anne Cathrine Sauerberg

Original Score

Bugonia, Jerskin Fendrix
Frankenstein, Alexandre Desplat
Hamnet, Max Richter
One Battle after Another, Jonny Greenwood
Sinners, Ludwig Goransson

Original Song

“Dear Me” from Diane Warren: Relentless; music and lyric by Diane Warren
“Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters; music and lyric by EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seon and Teddy Park
“I Lied to You” from Sinners; music and lyric by Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Goransson
“Sweet Dreams of Joy” from Viva Verdi!; music and lyric by Nicholas Pike
“Train Dreams” from Train Dreams; music by Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner; lyric by Nick Cave

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Achievement in production design

Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
Sinners

Best live action short film
Butcher’s Stain
A Friend of Dorothy
Jane Austen’s Period Drama
The Singers
Two People Exchanging Saliva

Achievement in sound

F1
Frankenstein
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Sirāt

Achievement in visual effects

Avatar: Fire and Ash
F1
Jurassic World Rebirth
The Lost Bus
Sinners

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Bugonia, screenplay by Will Tracy
Frankenstein, written for the screen by Guillermo del Toro
Hamnet, screenplay by Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell
One Battle after Another, written by Paul Thomas Anderson
Train Dreams, screenplay by Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar

Writing (Original Screenplay)
Blue Moon, written by Robert Kaplow
It Was Just an Accident, written by Jafar Panahi; script collaborators: Nader Saïvar, Shadmehr Rastin, Mehdi Mahmoudian
Marty Supreme, written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie
Sentimental Value, written by Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
Sinners, written by Ryan Coogler