Oscars 2025: Read The Hollywood Reporter’s Interviews With International Nominees
The 2025 Oscar nominations, unveiled on Thursday, brought joy to Academy Award contenders in the U.S. and beyond.
This year’s noms are led by Emilia Pérez with 13 nods, followed by The Brutalist and Wicked, which tied with 10 mentions apiece. A Complete Unknown and Conclave followed with eight nods each.
The 97th Academy Awards, hosted by Conan O’Brien, will air on Sunday, March 2, from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, starting at 4 p.m. PT/7 p.m. ET.
Over the past year, The Hollywood Reporter has interviewed a number of creatives about the films that are now in the running for Oscars. Read our conversations with some of the international nominees below.
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French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, best director nominee for The Substance — read our interview here — says of her bloody body horror flick: “The theme of the movie is something I’ve been working around for a long time. I felt strong enough to kind of cope with the disturbance that digging into this is going to create.”
Edward Berger is a best director nominee for his papal drama Conclave — read our interview here.
Among other things, the German-born director address the movie’s Oscar buzz and its parallels to the recent U.S. election. “What the film really deals with is doubt and certainty, and I think that pendulum also swings both ways. It doesn’t mean that every cardinal, every character in the movie, acts to the best of their conscience.”
An interview with Johan Grimonprez, best documentary nominee for Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, can be read here. In it, the Belgian filmmaker addresses why he made jazz a protagonist in his film and why he feels that “our materialist vision of the world is obsolete.”
Mohammad Rasoulof, best international feature nominee for The Seed of the Sacred Fig, spoke to THR a couple of times — read one of our interviews here and another one here. The director shares how he escaped Iran, how he “will never forget that the Islamic Republic is a terrorist,” and his hope for other dissident directors.
An interview with director Gints Zilbalodis, best international feature and best animated feature nominee for his eco-fable Flow — can be read here. The Latvian creative talks about his environmental fable and the feline inspiration behind it.
Adam Elliot, best animated feature nominee for Memoir of a Snail — read the interview here —
discusses how claymation can function as “as a form of therapy.”
Fernanda Torres, best actress nominee for I’m Still Here – read the interview here —
discusses starring in the true-life story of resistance and the strength of her character: “they couldn’t break her.”
Karla Sofía Gascón, best actress nominee for Emilia Pérez — read one of our interviews with her and co-stars Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez as well as a post-Oscar nomination interview in which the breakout talent and first openly transgender woman to earn a best actress nomination comments on President Donald Trump’s anti-trans order.
Check out THR‘s interview with Lol Crawley, best cinematography nominee for The Brutalist, to discover his favorite sequence in director Brady Corbet’s epic.
Greg Freiser, best cinematography nominee for Dune: Part Two — read the interview here —
discusses the plan he developed to keep his collaboration with director Denis Villeneuve as unadulterated as possible.
Paul Guilhaume, best cinematography nominee for Emilia Pérez, discusses why director Jacques Audiard “wanted to do a film that talks about very serious things but to add an element of lightness in the treatment and process of doing it.”
Nick Park and co-director Merlin Crossingham talk about the return of the beloved claymation characters in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, who were first introduced to the world in Park’s 1989 Oscar-nominated short A Grand Day Out. Among the topics discussed is “how much the fans really love Feathers.”
