Hollywood (United States) (AFP)
The Oscars on Sunday will be decidedly like no other: it is broadcast live from an art deco station in Los Angeles, rewards films mainly seen in streaming and brings together Hollywood stars for the first time since the beginning of the season. pandemic.
"Nomadland", a hybrid of road movie, social drama and documentary that follows elderly Americans living on the roads after losing everything in the "subprime" crisis, is considered the overwhelming favorite for the supreme "best" award. feature film ".
Five other Oscars are also within the reach of the film by Chloe Zhao, who is delighted at the idea of finding the gratin of Hollywood after a long confinement.
“We want to see our friends! We have a lot of friends nominated this year and we can't wait to see them,” said Chloe Zhao of this 93rd edition.
Fans, however, may be left hungry because the red carpet this year has been reduced to its simplest expression, in order to respect health rules and social distancing.
Most reporters will follow the show via the internet, and not all Hollywood moguls themselves have received an invitation.
- Hollywood favorite -
"Nomadland" has dominated the final awards season head and shoulders, and Chloe Zhao is Hollywood's favorite of the moment.
She looks set to become the second woman in Oscar history - and the first non-white - to win the coveted "Best Director" award.
With the pandemic that caused movie theaters to close and postponed the release of big Hollywood productions, "Nomadland" - like its competitors "Minari" and "Sound of Metal" - has managed to capture the era of time across the world. portrait of isolated characters on the fringes of American society, but free in their own way.
"Promising Young Woman" plays on feminism and the #MeToo movement while "The Chicago Seven" revisits the major demonstrations of 1968 and police repression, sadly topical themes.
The two films, however, appear to be outsiders for many experts.
The Oscars race for the categories of actors seems much more open, with a still unseen list in view: the four awards could go to comedians of color, after years of controversy over the composition of the Academy of Oscars, judged too white and masculine to reflect society as a whole.
The category of the best actress is this year "very volatile" and "can go in all directions", estimates Pete Hammond, expert of the specialized site Deadline.
Oscar-winning actress Frances McDormand, who leads the almost all-amateur cast of modern "Nomadland" trekkers, is once again in the running.
But the five contestants, including Viola Davis ("The Blues of Ma Rainey") and Carey Mulligan ("Promising Young Woman"), have won major awards for their work.
- Posthumous Oscar?
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Viola Davis' on-screen partner Chadwick Boseman, who died of cancer last summer before the film's release in which he plays a trumpeter haunted by racist atrocities, is expected to triumph in his category.
But a member of the Academy of Oscars estimated on condition of anonymity that a "surprise" remained possible with "Anthony Hopkins in ambush" for his performance in "The Father".
Daniel Kaluuya is favorite for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor thanks to her role in "Judas and the Black Messiah" while South Korean Youn Yuh-jung enjoys increasing popularity on the female side after recent speeches, funny and bites, which she uttered while receiving awards for "Minari".
It is the Netflix platform which should on paper win the largest number of Oscars on Sunday, with technical categories and the documentary "The wisdom of the octopus".
If the pandemic has forced organizers to postpone the Oscars by two months, the co-producer of the evening, director Steven Soderbergh, has promised that these upheavals will be an opportunity to deliver a show that will be unlike "anything like that." has been done before ".
The ceremony should be filmed like a movie film rather than a TV show, he said.
Organizers have insisted the stars, including Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, be in gala attire and they should be allowed to remove their masks when they are on screen.
As for the European stars who will not have been able to reach Los Angeles, they will be welcomed at dedicated sites in London and Paris, with retransmission by satellite beam.
© 2021 AFP