French film 'Anatomy of a Fall' nominated for five awards at 2024 Oscars
"Anatomy of a Fall", the French thriller that swept the Cannes Film Festival, has been nominated for five 2024 Academy Awards, it was announced on Tuesday – including the top honours for best picture and best director.
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"Anatomy of a Fall" is competing for the best picture Oscar against Hollywood blockbusters including "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie", rather than in the category reserved for international films.
Director Justine Triet, who received the 2023 Palme d'Or at Cannes for the film, is up against heavyweights Christopher Nolan (for "Oppenheimer") and Martin Scorsese ("Killers of the Flower Moon").
She is the only woman to be nominated for the best director award, out of five filmmakers named.
Her courtroom drama – which she co-wrote with her partner, fellow French director Arthur Harari – was further nominated for best original screenplay.
Sandra Hüller, who plays the film's lead, is among the nominees for best actress, while editor Laurent Sénéchal is in the running for the Oscar for film editing.
The winners will be announced on 10 March.
Autopsy of a marriage
"Anatomy of a Fall" was widely tipped for Oscar success after it secured two Golden Globes earlier this month, one for best screenplay and another for best non-English-language film.
To some surprise, France did not select it as its Oscar submission for best foreign film – instead choosing "The Taste of Things" starring Juliette Binoche, which did not make the Academy's final shortlist.
Triet's film focuses on the trial of a German writer (Hüller) accused of murdering her French husband, played by Samuel Theis, which becomes an autopsy of the complicated marriage they shared.
Theis is facing an investigation for alleged rape in France in connection with a different film that he directed last year.
Jury favourite
Triet is only the third female director in the Cannes festival's 76-year history to win its top prize.
Outside France, "Anatomy of a Fall" has swept awards lists around the world, winning five European Film Awards and receiving nominations for seven British Academy Film Awards, among others.
Triet has said that she had assumed that "nobody is going to see this movie", given its dark subject matter and slippery storytelling.
"This movie is about the truth, the impossibility of capturing it," she told the Golden Globes award ceremony in Los Angeles. "It's a construction."
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