You could call it luck. Over the years, we’ve had a lot of luck picking the winners of the Academy Awards. Then again, after a while, maybe it’s more than luck. Last year, we were right on the money in all but a few categories. The same can be said going back throughout the history of this site. Are the Oscars easily predicted, or are we just that good? Every year we test the theory and every year the answer comes back with a resounding answer: we’re just that good. Which is why we’ve got confidence in our 2016 Oscar predictions.
Now that we’ve moved through the part of the intro where we express hubris, let’s move on to this year’s Oscar predictions. Many awards pundits are calling this one of the most unpredictable years on record. Over the course of the next 24 categories, we will attempt to prove them all wrong. Our crack staff of Neil Miller, Tomris Laffly and chief film critic Rob Hunter have broken down every single category in-depth, picking both our projected winner and who we think should win.
We begin with the short film awards and work our way toward Best Picture below.
Best Live Action Short Film
Tomris Laffly: My favorite in this category, Everything will be Okay, is the first film I am eliminating from the list of possible wins. Exceptions aside, steady slow burns don’t tend to do well here often times (remember Just Before Losing Everything in 2013, which was pretty much in the same realm.) Day One -which tells the story of an Afghan-American woman on the first day of her job in Afghanistan- and Shok, which tells the wartime story of a friendship torn apart in Kosovo- stand out immediately due to their memorable endings. I’ll go with Shok, as that is what my gut tells me currently. But watch for Day One or the humorous Ave Maria as potential dark horses.
Who Will Win: Shok
Who Should Win: Everything Will Be Okay
Best Animated Short Film
Tomris Laffly: Sanjay’s Super Team has the advantage of being a popular (and charming) Pixar movie that was probably seen by the majority of the voting base. The World of Tomorrow became a prominent and highbrow favorite among critics (Indiewire’s Eric Kohn and The Rolling Stone’s David Ehrlich are among them.) In all honesty, this is anyone’s guess just like the rest of the short categories. Ever since the voting of shorts was opened to the entire membership in 2013 (no longer limiting it to those who have attended the AMPAS-hosted screenings), emotional/easily-accessible ones became safer bets for a win. I know voters can (and in many cases, do) abstain if they haven’t seen all the nominees in these categories, but I will still go with the most moving nominee of this crop (and my personal favorite): the Chilean animation Bear Story. Not only it is lovely and melancholic at once, but it also stands as a timely parable for animal rights.
Who Will Win: Bear Story
Who Should Win: Bear Story OR The World of Tomorrow
Best Documentary Short Subject
Tomris Laffly: I find the Documentary Short category to be one of the toughest to predict this year. Not that shorts aren’t always difficult to handicap. Yet, this particular crop of incredibly devastating, mostly issue-based films makes it almost impossible to single one out as the “winner” that will viscerally and intellectually connect with the voters most. Will AMPAS respond to the story of a female body collector in Liberia, dangerously tasked with working amid the Ebola outbreak (with Olivia Wilde being one of the Executive Producers)? A young woman who survives an honor killing in Pakistan? The gut-wrenching story of a racist prosecution that took place in 1980s, told in the age of ‘Black Lives Matter’? A disabled Vietnamese teen’s artistic pursuits against all the odds? Or a fascinating look at the making of Claude Lanzmann’s Holocaust epic Shoah?
A case can easily be made for each one of them. One of the favorites of Oscar prognosticators –Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah– includes several mind-boggling, instantly gripping stories. The other popular one –Body Team 12– is a harrowing account of the Ebola outbreak told from the POV of a courageous woman. I found A Girl In the River: The Price of Forgiveness to be the most captivating one emotionally, so I will go with that despite the fact that Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy –its director/producer- has already won an Oscar in this category with Saving Face in 2012.
Who Will Win: A Girl In the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Who Should Win: Any one of them
Best Documentary Feature
Neil Miller: For the past few years, Best Documentary Feature has been one of the most predictable categories. All of the previous three winners — Searching for Sugar Man, 20 Feet from Stardom and Citizenfour — were considered to be frontrunners going into Oscar night. This year, there seems to be yet another clear frontrunner in Asif Kapadia’s Amy. Across the board, it’s been the most awarded documentary of the year. However, recent momentum seems to favor Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence, which took home a pretty clean sweep at the Cinema Eye Awards in January. There’s also been a groundswell of social media support for The Look of Silence, which is being distributed by Film Twitter favorite Drafthouse Films. Does The Academy care about social media groundswells or recent momentum? Not really. Given the choice, they seem to prefer stories about the rigors of being famous over films like The Look of Silence, which give us a brutal, insightful look at genocide. Oppenheimer’s film will undoubtedly be looked upon by film historians as the more important documentary of 2015, but it’s not going to take home an Oscar.
Who Will Win: Amy
Who Should Win: The Look of Silence
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