Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast might have been the big British success story from yesterday’s Academy Awards nominations announcement, but this has also been a strong year for some of the biggest Jewish names in the film industry.
Steven Spielberg’s remake of the much loved musical West Side Story scored a total of 7 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for the veteran filmmaker. Spielberg won the prize twice before for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, could this make it his third win.
Spielberg will have to face off some stiff competition in both Best Director and Best Picture Categories from the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson whose film Licorice Pizza is unquestionably the most thematically Jewish production to be nominated in this category. There were also high hopes for Licorice Pizza star Alana Haim in the Best Lead Actress category, but the Jewish American actor and member of indie band Haim, narrowly missed out on a nomination.
Elsewhere, Jewish actor-turned-director Maggie Gyllenhaal might have missed out on a Best Director nod for her critically acclaimed directorial debut The Lost Daughter, but the film did manage to score a Best Picture nomination, with Olivia Colman also scoring a Best Lead Actress nod for Gyllenhaal’s film.
This year’s biggest acting success story has got to be Jewish British actor Andrew Garfield. Garfield starred as Jewish composer Jonathan Larson in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tick, Tick... Boom! and as Televangelist Jim Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but it is his extraordinary all singing, all dancing turn in Miranda’s film that managed to score the much loved actor his second Best Lead Actor nomination. Garfield was earlier nominated for the same accolade in 2017 for his role in Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge.
Veteran Jewish screenwriter Eric Roth who won earlier for Forest Gump has been nominated alongside Jon Spaiths and Denis Villeneuve in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for Dune. The film also starred Jewish French-American actor Timothée Chalamet, who sadly missed out once again on a Best Lead Actor nod. Meanwhile, Jewish writer David Sitora was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay for the satirical end of the world tragicomedy Don’t Look Up.
The Best Original Score category sees not one, but three composers with Jewish ties. They are Hans Zimmer who is nominated for Dune, Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood for The Power of the Dog (the musician is married to Israeli artist Sharona Katas and the couple are raising their children in the Jewish faith). Meanwhile, New York-born Jewish composer Nicholas Britell (If Beale Street Could Talk, Succession) is nominated for Don't Look Up.
Sadly Joel Coen, one-half of the Coen Brothers, failed to get a nod for his innovative adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth. The film did however result in a Best Actor nomination for Denzel Washington.
