Nominations and awards abound. After the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023; after four statuettes at the European Film Awards in Berlin in December 2023 – Best Film, Best Editing, Best Screenplay and Best Actress for Sandra Hüller; after two Golden Globes on January 8 in Hollywood – Best Screenplay and Best Foreign-Language film; after a total of 18 awards from the world's top festivals, Anatomy of the Fall, Justine Triet's film, is now in the running for an Oscar. An unexpected honor, this latest accolade borders on being a form of vindication for its director.
The selection committee for the 96th Academy Awards ceremony, to be held in Los Angeles on March 10, chose to nominate Triet's fourth feature film five times, making it a contender for the Oscars for Best Original Screenplay (Justine Triet and Arthur Harari), Best Director, Best Actress (Sandra Hüller) and Best Editing (Laurent Sénéchal).
The nominations, announced on Tuesday, January 23, confirm the film's popularity with critics and audiences alike. In France, the film has pulled in over 1.3 million viewers to date and is still going strong with another 45,000 tickets sold last week at the Télérama festival. Internationally, it is also seeing success with around 1.6 million viewers.
They also come as a harsh rebuke to France's Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC), whose committee of professionals, representing France at the Oscars in the "Best Foreign Film" category, preferred Tran Anh Hung's The Taste of Things, a quaint, somewhat antiquated culinary drama starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel, by four votes to three. The film is not on the list of nominees.
A controversy that died down
This choice raised many serious questions in the industry. Even suspicion. Had Triet been rejected for her speech at the Palme d'Or ceremony? A speech which, it will be recalled, was scathing in its criticism of the government's cultural, social and pension policies.
In the weeks that followed, the filmmaker, whose speech divided public opinion, provided extensive explanations on radio and television, clarifying and defending her remarks made on stage at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes. The controversy gradually died down, only to be completely swept away by the barrage of awards her film received over the following eight months. After the Oscars come the Césars, whose nominations are due to be announced on Wednesday, with the ceremony scheduled for February 24.
For the time being, the presence of Anatomy of a Fall at the Oscars is already provoking numerous reactions. Among them is that of producer Charles Gillibert, a member of the CNC commission, who admitted to Agence France-Presse on Tuesday that "it's completely obvious that we didn't send the right film to the Oscars." On X, Triet can be seen watching the results of her nominations unfold live, initially hesitating and appearing incredulous. This moment sparked a whirlwind of reactions online, ranging from excitement and astonishment to laughter and tears.
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