Meet This Year's Potential Best Picture Contenders
The decorations at your local mall may say "Christmas," but the movie release schedule suggests a different time of year: Awards Season. The next five weeks will introduce some heavy hitters—including new films from David O. Russell, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Haynes, and Alejandro González Iñárritu—into what is already shaping up to be a crowded field of contenders. Actually, history suggests that the next best picture winner may already be playing in a theater near you. No December release has won the top Oscar in over a decade.
With that in mind, browse our quick guide to the 25 films that still appear to be in the running for best picture consideration, including titles released earlier this year as well as those arriving over the next month.
Is it still an underdog if nearly every awards expert is mentioning it as a potential contender? Perhaps not, but best picture nominations for foreign-language films are still extremely rare: it has only happened nine times in Oscar history, most recently in 2012 for Amour. Son of Saul, a stunningly filmed Holocaust drama that serves as the debut from writer-director László Nemes, would be the first Hungarian film so honored. It already won four awards at Cannes, including the Grand Prix (the festival's 2nd place prize).