We got a taste of what the Oscars 2026 will look like after the awards were handed down in Venice. No one was expecting Jim Jarmusch’s film to win, but that wasn’t what the freak-out was about. Instead, it was over a Palestinian movie, The Voice of Hind Rajab. Or it was just Alexander Payne, who suddenly became the target of your typical Film Twitter hive mind. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a white, straight guy.
Anyway, I’ll leave the reading of the tea leaves at Venice for Scott Kernen, who will cover it tomorrow. Instead, I’ll say that in looking over Venice and the beginnings of Toronto now, it seems that we are getting a taste of what kinds of themes and films will be stronger this year than others.
The films in Toronto so far that have become buzzy titles include Christy, starring Sydney Sweeney (even if the critics aren’t exactly on board), and Roofman, starring Channing Tatum. Roofman is coming in hot with Rotten Tomatoes, and Channing Tatum especially:
Rental Family isn’t getting the kind of uplift that most people expected, along with Sentimental Value, which was met with a muted reception. At least that’s how it seems to me while watching the Twitter reactions. It’s still sitting with a 95% on RT, but it feels like it wasn’t the toast of the fest the way it was at Telluride.
Hamnet has hit Toronto as it hit Telluride — straight through the heart and will likely win the audience award. Hamnet is a force to be reckoned with because of its emotional punch. That is the kind of thing that does well with Oscar voters. It is, to my mind, the only genuine threat to Sinners at this stage of the race.
has not yet been screened but is expected to wow crowds there, much like it did in Telluride. If it doesn’t, that might be a sign that it isn’t as strong as previously thought. One Battle After Another is being lined up for influencers and tastemakers screenings and will open to the public later this month. Wake Up Dead Man is coming in as the best of the series, and it’s possible it becomes Netflix’s strongest player for Best Picture nomination, but it’s too soon to make that call.
We’re still waiting on big movies like Wicked: For Good, Avatar: Fire and Ash and The Housemaid, Ella McCay, Is This Thing On, and Marty Supreme. All of the Oscar movies from the festivals will find their way to theaters in the next few months, and we’ll find out if any of them have any traction with audiences.
By the time we see everything, the passion for Hamnet might die down. Then again, it might not. To figure out what movie might win, we can’t really look at how the critics are reacting so much as what kinds of themes drive these movies and whether they will resonate with thousands and thousands of voters.
If there wasn’t a Sinners right now, Hamnet would easily be the frontrunner. It is only the success of Sinners that looms large. So what’s the difference between these two movies as potential winners? What does each win say about the state of the industry and the Oscars?
A win for Hamnet doesn’t change much from where we were before. It’s a film festival movie, what we would once call a “prestige pic,” that would play in the art houses for the NPR crowd, but a movie not many people would have ever even heard of or watched. I can say that the book is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and so talking about Hamnet has more to do with what I know about the story, until I see the movie.
Produced by Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes, it looks like a surefire PGA winner. Can it win the DGA? Possibly. Can Chloe Zhao become the first woman to win Best Director twice? Sure. Why not? There are no rules anymore about who or what can win. It’s merely a matter of whether thousands of people love the movie, not hundreds. Thousands.
At the same time, Sinners can’t offer what Hamnet can. It’s not in that realm of sophisticated arthouse prestige pic. It wasn’t grown in a hot house and won’t exist mostly for critics and the Oscars, which Hament might. Women will swoon over it, especially those who know the book. All of the same people who are carping about “Wuthering Heights” will love Hamnet for its authentic feminist heroine.
A Sinners’ win is, quite frankly, better for the film industry and the Oscars because it says it still has one foot in the realm of the American public and that a film can succeed, as it has, through word of mouth alone, with not a lot of publicity behind it — and make over $300 million. That might not seem like a big deal compared to the heart wanting what it wants, but it is what so many people trying to save Hollywood now are dreaming of.
Without having seen either movie, both Sentimental Value and Hamnet, and possibly Jay Kelly, are about how art is inspired by our real lives, or how it can launder our own personal traumas or relationships. They seem to be standing up for art as an essential component of the human experience. And, as it happens, that is what Sinners is about, too. It just goes about it in a slightly different way.
In Sinners, it is a retelling of the birth of the blues, not to have come from the Devil, but as a gift — perhaps from God — that saved many of those suffering and struggling to survive in the Jim Crow South. It is the same — art saves us — but it’s a slightly different kind of art than those other films, which is about plays or movies.
Whatever else is coming next, these films will mirror back to the industry what already defines their lives, more or less. They make art, thus films that prioritize art will represent them well. But beyond that, what else is going on?
To understand what themes will resonate best, one must understand the consensus. The who, what, and where of the voters. Who are they? What do they stand for? What do they care about? What will drive them to push one movie to the top of their ballots over another? Hamnet is a no-brainer. It’s green lights all the way. It’s made by a woman of color, Chloé Zhao. It’s written by a woman, Maggie O’Farrell. It stars the frontrunner to win Best Actress, Jessie Buckley, and it is about the life and work of William Shakespeare.
Even though it’s meant to be a story about Shakespeare’s unknown wife and children, it wouldn’t exist without Shakespeare himself. In some ways, you could put this movie alongside Shakespeare in Love, and it would play as a nice double feature. Here is what Shakespeare was doing while his wife was toiling away caring for her sickly daughter, as her son was dying. But the tone of the two films is so starkly different — much like the different tones of Shakespeare’s work. He could write comedy and tragedy.
That in itself makes Hamnet a richer and deeper experience for voters than Sinners, which is much more of a modern zeitgeist thing for the world that exists outside the bubble of the film industry. It is the feminist telling of this story, particularly as a suffering woman that I think could resonate with voters and probably many of the women on TikTok and YouTube, I’m guessing. This is how women see themselves (on the Left), as martyrs whose work is not appreciated.
Meanwhile, Shakespeare is all but ignored until the very end. Even his talent is more or less credited with his wife’s certainty that he would be someone special. But he’s definitely the guy who had to get out of the messiness of everyday life to be able to focus and write the way he did.
Sinners could be positioned as a movie that drives the fury over racism that also seems to define today’s Left as they believe Trump and his movement are driven by racism (which is not true but I don’t want to argue). Sinners reflects the minority’s voice but in my opinion that traps it and limits its success, making it about white guilt rather than the cinematic achievement that it is. Ryan Coogler absolutely deserves all the credit in the world for making a successful, original, banger of a movie.
The question is whether it will resonate with these voters right now. It will if they see Trump and his supporters as their tormenters and compare them to the Southern crackers in the movie who get mowed down. Then, maybe. But that would be a win driven more by hate than love where Hamnet’s win would be driven by love.
I don’t think Sentimental Value can top Hamnet in terms of passion, and they both dwell in more or less the same territory. What makes Sinners stand out is that it’s a one-of-a-kind movie, and if Coogler wins, he’ll be the first Black director in 98 years of Oscar history. But again, if the competition is a woman of color, then that takes some of the sting out of it. I kind of think even Chloé Zhao would like to see Coogler pull it out, but what do I know?
Strong women, hapless men
The Best Actor race is packed with hapless men — or at least lost men with two exceptions. The first was The Rock in The Smashing Machine, which shocked everyone by winning Best Director in Venice. The other is Matthew McConaughey in The Lost Bus, whether or not it’s an Oscar contender.
Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen having a mental collapse. George Clooney is in an existential crisis in Jay Kelly. Jesse Plemons as a conspiracy theorist, Timothee Chalamet as a ping pong champ. Leonardo DiCaprio fumbling around in One Battle After Another. Michael B. Jordan is a male hero archetype in Sinners, which is another way the movie stands out.
And finally, it seems clear that this will be the year of “Free Palestine” at the awards. We will discuss this more on the next podcast, but we see an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object here in terms of those who support Israel and those who support calling out Israel for committing genocide. These themes will work their way through the Oscar race, too, in one way or another.
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By: Sasha Stone
Title: 2026 Oscars: The Themes That Will Drive This Year’s Best Picture Race
Sourced From: www.awardsdaily.com/2025/09/07/2026-oscars-the-themes-that-will-drive-this-years-best-picture-race/
Published Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2025 23:00:12 +0000
