By Mike Fleming JrPatrick Hipes

Nominations for the 97th Oscars were revealed Thursday morning and the major takeaway is this heralds the most wide-open awards race we have witnessed in years.

A far cry from last year when Oppenheimer expectedly dominated the proceedings, this time the race for Best Picture features a class of wildly different, audaciously ambitious films. Emilia Pérez, the musical about a Mexican cartel leader who fakes his death and undergoes a gender transition but cannot avoid the people in her former life, leads all nominees with 13 including Best Picture, the most by a non-English-language film in Oscar history.

Also up for the top prize are Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance and Wicked.

Wicked got 10 nominations – including for its stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande – tying it for second most overall with Brady Corbet’s sweeping The Brutalist, which got noms for Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, and Corbet for directing. Conclave and A Complete Unknown drew eight nominations each, while Palme d’Or winner Anora had six, and the wild horror tale The Substance drew five including Demi Moore’s first nomination after she won the Golden Globe. The Substance‘s director Coralie Fargeat also got nominated.

Of that lot, the directors of frontrunners Conclave (Edward Berger) and Wicked (Jon Chu) did not get nominated.

Beyond The Substance, perhaps the biggest surprise was nominations for Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan for the Ali Abbasi-directed The Apprentice. While their work was universally lauded, Strong and Stan seemed marginalized by all of the struggles the makers of The Apprentice had with cease-and-desist threats from new U.S. President Donald Trump, who reviled his coming-of-age story when the young wannabe real estate mogul was taken under the wing of polarizing lawyer Roy Cohn in the ‘70s.

Past Oscar winners Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), Angelina Jolie (Maria) and Jamie Lee Curtis (The Last Showgirl) found themselves on the outside looking in this morning, in as did Gladiator II’s Denzel Washington, who was told by outgoing president Joe Biden he was a shoo-in for another Oscar when presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Both Supporting Actor categories were stacked, and only five make the lightning round.

The noms come at the apex of another wild movie awards season that began in earnest as far back as May, when movies like eventual frontrunners Emilia PérezAnora and The Substance made their splashy debuts at Cannes, and culminated when Wicked debuted on Thanksgiving weekend smashing box office records along its yellow-brick road.

All were front and center in the Academy’s shortlist announcements in December and again today.

Since then, the L.A. wildfires have forced myriad changes to the kudos season, and even the Oscars themselves, with the noms date pushed twice before settling on today.

On Wednesday this week, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences brass said the March 2 Oscar ceremony on ABC and Hulu would even “move away from live performances” of the Original Song nominees and focus on the songwriters,” hinting at a toned-down show that will “honor Los Angeles as the city of dreams” and “reflect on the recent events while highlighting the strength, creativity and optimism that defines Los Angeles and our industry.”

Today’s noms will set the stage for the Oscar ceremony, to be hosted by Conan O’Brien a year after Oppenheimer swept to seven wins including Best Picture, after scoring a leading 13 nominations.

Documentary Feature Film 

“Black Box Diaries” (MTV Documentary Films)
A Hanashi Films/Cineric Creative/Star Sands Production
Shiori Ito, Eric Nyari and Hanna Aqvilin

“No Other Land”
An Antipode Films Production
Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham

“Porcelain War” (Picturehouse)
A Songbird Studios/Imaginary Lane Production
Brendan Bellomo, Slava Leontyev, Aniela Sidorska and Paula DuPre’ Pesmen

“Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” (Kino Lorber)
An Onomatopee Films/Warboys Films Production
Johan Grimonprez, Daan Milius and Rémi Grellety

“Sugarcane” (National Geographic Documentary Films)
A Hedgehog Films/Kassie Films/Impact Partners/Fit Via Vi Production
Nominees to be determined

Picturehouse