Cynthia Erivo is one of five hopefuls to win Best Actress in a Leading Role at this year’s Academy Awards. Erivo, who has reached higher popularity thanks to her phenomenal lead role in the global box office hit Wicked, is an Oscar win away from being in the rare EGOT realm.
Except for Fernanda Torres from I’m Still Here, Erivo is up against several familiar faces in similar categories at recent award shows, including Golden Globes winner Demi Moore, Anora star Mikey Madison, and Karla Sofía Gascón from Emilia Perez, the most-nominated film at this year’s Oscars with 13 nods.
Emilia Pérez sets a new record for the most nominations for a non-English film, and it also matches last year’s historic number of nods set by Oppenheimer. Erivo’s Best Actress nod is one of ten nominations for Wicked, the second most nominations this year, alongside Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist.
For the fourth year in a row,no film submitted by an African country is in the running for Best International Film, which is particularly disappointing for Mati Diop’s Golden Bear-winning Dahomey. No African film has won the award in two decades since the South African film Tsotsi won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The only African film nominated in the category this decade remains The Man Who Sold His Skin by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouthar Ben Hania.
In the Best Live-Action Short Film category, Cindy Lee’sThe Last Ranger, a film about a ranger and her young protégé fighting to protect rhinos from being hunted in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, has been nominated. The short film is part of the anthology When the World Stopped, and it stars Avumile Qongqo and Liyabona Mroqoza in lead roles.
Also, notable Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez’sSoundtrack to a Coup D’Etat is up for Best Documentary Feature category. A comprehensive and enveloping detailing of the origins of the Congo crisis, Grimonprez weaves in the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the ideological beginnings of Pan-Africanism, the sometimes unwitting role of iconic jazz musicians, and more into his epic.
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For Education and discussion purposes. Please note no copyright infringement is intended, was recorded on BlkCosmo’s own equipment, and we do not own nor claim to own any of the original recordings used in this video and intend to use this as ‘fair use’.
