Academy Awards 2023 nominees predictions: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay & Best Adapted Screenplay (1st ROUND)

• BEST DIRECTOR

Steven Spielberg is back in the Oscar race for the second year in a row... and now he's eyeing his 9th Academy Award nomination for Best Director! A 2 time winner already, Spielberg has met critical acclaim once again thanks to The Fabelmans, which is a tale of his own childhood and pursue of cinematic dreams - and considering it won the People's Choice Award at TIFF, The Fabelmans is both a critics darling and a crowd-pleaser! The Academy loves when directors put their own memories on the big screen (Cuarón won Best Director for Roma and Branagh won Best Original Screenplay for Belfast, recently) and Spielberg's career has been asking for a 3rd Best Director win lately! Then, there's Sarah Polley with one of the most acclaimed movies of the Fall film festival circuit: Women Talking. Critics highlight her sensivity while handling the heavy dramatic material about a group of women who deals with sexual assault by the community's men (it's far more complex than this, but let's short things here) and the movie is considered one of the frontrunners for Best Picture. Considering the AMPAS has become quite receptive about female directors recently, gender bias is no longer that big issue in the Best Director field (Zhao and Campion won here in the two previous years) - I believe Polley has secured a confortable position in the Best Director race. Third place goes to Martin McDonagh for The Banshees of Inisherin and while most people consider he is more of a screenwriter than a director, I believe he has 3 big factors playing in his advantage this year: The Banshees of Inisherin got plenty of rave reviews and it is under some crazy Oscar buzz; Searchlight is backing the movie and it will be running its Oscar campaign; and McDonagh was already snubed for Best Director previously (for  2017's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). So, I guess it is his time!

Now, I believe Best Director predictions feel a bit tricky, because the last two spots feel like a No Man's Land for me, personally. Still, I believe Park Chan-wook might finally be invited for the ceremony as a Best Director nominee for Decision to Leave - with many critics highlighting the Hitchcock-ian approach of the movie without losing its own voice and signature elements, I believe the South Korean director has the right directing showcase to earn him a so deserved (career) Best Director nod. Plus, Decision to Leave is one of the early favorites in the Best International Film category, which plays in his advantage! The last seat goes to Gina Prince-Bythewood who directs the great female-led action epic The Woman King. The movie is great and it never sacrifices its narrative and character development over its impressive (and beautiful) scale. The movie has some screenplay issues, but Prince-Bythewood is smart enough to overtake them and the final product is a cinematic show. If nominated, she would become the first female director of color to ever be nominated for Best Director at the Oscars - and this kind of achievement is of the AMPAS' best interest.

"Below the line": Todd Field directing work in Tár has been earning him critical acclaim and the movie is seen as a perfect director-muse product, but Tár might find some difficulties in bonding with the non-critics audiences and not be in the run for Best Picture... or can he "pull a Foxcatcher" here by managing to be nominated without a Best Picture nod? Focus Features is a good campaigner and I can see it happen; The Daniels are being carried by Everything Everywhere All at Once massive (and unexpected) success to the top spots of the Best Director race, but I can see a scenario where they get snubed in this category because of the movie's purposefully chaotic style, since some might see it as a "lack of control" of the creative proccess; next I have Edward Berger, the director of Germany's submission All Quiet on the Western Front, which is distributed/backed by the giant Netflix... and while I don't know if the movie will be a top campaigning priority across the board, the reviews point how great the movie is and how successfully Berger handles the material and creates one of the most visceral war movies in years (according to critics)... and Oscar voters love war movies; then Damien Chazelle for Babylon, a personal project, which the AMPAS loves, but I was expecting a more prestige toned movie and not the wildly chaotic tone I found in the movie trailer... I know the Academy went for The Wolf of Wall Street some years ago, but Chazelle is no Scorsese (yet); and, finally, the last spot goes for James Cameron for Avatar: The Way of Water, since he has taken years to finish the sequel, to reach the level of perfection he seeks for this one, which might result in another high quality blockbuster and a "below the line categories" big player (which tends to translate to a Best Director nom, with 2021's Dune being one of those rare exceptions).

NOTE: the recent rave reviews around Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio make me wonder if he can become the first director to be nominated for an animated film... but let's wait and see how the Oscar buzz develops from here today.

• BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY & BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

I use to say the Writers Branch is the coolest branch in the Academy because they often make really inspiring choice coming Oscar nominations morning! They are totally shameless about picking foreign screenplays or to grant the sole nomination of a movie at the Oscars and they usually have good taste!

So, that's why I believe they could go for some big critics darlings like Tár (written by Todd Field, who's already a 2 times nominee in the screenplay field) or Bones and All (screenplay by David Kajganich, movie directed by Luca Guadagnino, it has been making waves in the film festival circuit and it is seen as a potential dark horse in some categories if the AMPAS ignores the horror genre bias). I also believe this branch is open enough to nominate an Animated Feature like Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio and the writers can also embrace the International Film frontrunners Decision to Leave, All Quiet on the Western Front and Close or find some beauty in Kazuo Ishiguro's (a Nobel prize winner) screenplay for Living. I also feel that last year's The Happening (L'événement in French, last year's winner of the Golden Lion of Venice International Film Festival) has a fair shot as a "surprise" nominee in Best Adapted Screenplay, considering the abortion theme and how it translates to US's reality these days. A note about Triangle of Sadness, which I considerer to be pretty plain screenplay-wise but it has NEON backing the campaign, so a nod can actually happen. As for Cha Cha Real Smooth... the movie is simply lovely and it still sticks with me and considering it is Apple's biggest chance to get nominated, so I am expecting it being campaigned a lot!

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