2025 Oscars: Best Cinematography Predictions
- Final voting for the 97th Oscars is February 11-18, with the telecast airing live on ABC on March 2 at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT.
Final voting is February 11-18. The 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2, and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions .
The State of the Race
The Best Cinematography nominees are “The Brutalist” (Lol Crawley), “Dune: Part Two” (Greig Fraser), “Emilia Pérez” (Paul Guilhaume), “Maria” (Ed Lachman), and “Nosferatu” (Jarin Blaschke). “The Brutalist,” “Maria,” and “Nosferatu” were all shot on Kodak film. And “The Brutalist,” “Emilia Pérez,” and “Dune: Part Two” are up for Best Picture.
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All but Guilhaume received ASC nominations , which also include “A Complete Unknown” (Phedon Papamichael), “Conclave” (Stéphane Fontaine), and “Wicked” (Alice Brooks). The additional two nominees pertain to the close voting percentages.
Crawley’s the favorite for the VistaVision buzz surrounding “The Brutalist,” followed by Guilhaume, Fraser (who won for “Dune”), Lachman (who nabbed his fourth nomination), and Blaschke (previously nominated for “The Lighthouse”).
Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” is a post-Holocaust immigrant story set in Pennsylvania about the battle of wills between architect László Tóth (Best Actor nominee Adrien Brody), a Hungarian Jew and Auschwitz survivor, and industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Best Supporting Actor nominee Guy Pearce). Crawley predominantly shot in VistaVision (the first time since “One-Eyed Jacks”), in which the 35mm film is mounted horizontally for higher resolution and released in both 35mm and 70mm. The Brutalist architectural movement from the ’50s came out of post-war trauma. The non-decorative style was angular and comprised of exposed concrete or brick. The film uses the maximalist capability of VistaVision to convey the minimalist characterization of Tóth.
Fraser returns as DP of “Dune: Part Two,” Denis Villeneuve’s more lavish sequel, in which Paul (Timothée Chalamet) leads the nomadic Fremen in battle on Arrakis as a prelude to their holy war. Think “Lawrence of Arabia” in space. It’s a bigger world with more planets, more set pieces, and more action. This time, the large-format film was presented entirely in the expanded IMAX aspect ratio with the Alexa mini LF and Alexa 65 digital cameras using spherical lenses. The desert contained an expanded color palette for the immense battle sequences and the romance between Paul and Chani. In addition, Fraser experimented with an infrared black-and-white look for the gladiator fight sequences with Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) on the artificial Harkonnen planet of Giedi Prime. Fraser used the Alexa 65 with special filtering and monochrome desaturation.
“Nosferatu,” director Robert Eggers’ reworking of the legendary silent vampire film by F.W. Murnau, stars Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok, Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen, and Nicholas Hoult as her husband. Shot in 35mm (1.66) by the director’s frequent cinematographer Blaschke, the film boasts a desaturated look reminiscent of Romanticism through special filtering that was engineered. It offers the chills and thrills of roving from 19th-century Germany to a Gothic castle in Romania.
“Maria,” Pablo Larraín’s biographically inspired drama about opera singer Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie), takes place during the last week of her life. It continues the director’s cycle of psychological portraits (“Jackie,” “Spencer”) and contains a visual concept that fuses the ’40s through the ’70s with musical sequences. It’s shot in multiple formats (35mm, 16mm, Super 8) by Lachman in color for the present and in black-and-white for her memories. The effect captures contrasting emotions during personal highs and lows, performances, interviews, and introspection.
“Emilia Pérez,” the musical crime thriller from Jacques Audiard, stars Best Supporting Actress nominee Zoe Saldaña as a disgruntled lawyer who assists the titular Mexican cartel leader (Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón) in undergoing gender confirmation surgery. The director audaciously offers an operatic fever dream about the hope of a new life through song and dance — but it’s also about the difficulty in escaping the past. It is set in Mexico City but shot in Paris by cinematographer Guillaume. The gaudy, neon-lit style is combined with the rough naturalism of the crime world.
Nominees are listed below in order of likelihood they will win.
Contenders
“The Brutalist” (Lol Crawley)
“Dune: Part Two” (Greig Fraser)
“Nosferatu” (Jarin Blaschke)
“Maria” (Ed Lachman)
“Emilia Pérez” (Paul Guilhaume)
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