Anora v Conclave: The Hollywood heavyweight battle to win best film at the Oscars

The two films could hardly be more different: a raucous, rip-roaring indie about a sex worker, and an elegant, big-studio drama set in the Vatican.

But Anora and Conclave appear to be locked in a tight two-horse race to win best picture at the Oscars on Sunday.

With a twisty awards season rocked by Los Angeles wildfires, the battle for Hollywood’s ultimate prize is too close to call.

“I don’t think anyone can honestly tell you,” said The Hollywood Reporter’s awards expert Scott Feinberg.

“Both sides are feeling more nervous than confident... that should be an indicator that this is really a nail-biter,” he said.

Sean Baker’s Anora —about a New York exotic dancer who weds a wealthy Russian playboy, only to learn that her dream marriage is a nightmare illusion — is the year’s most awarded film to date.

The low-budget indie won the Cannes festival’s Palme d’Or last May, and has accrued top prizes from Hollywood directors, producers, writers and critics.

Baker’s directorship has garnered support from even the porn industry for his depiction of a sex worker.

“Sean gets sex work. He just does,” porn actress and director Casey Calvert said.

“Hollywood, historically speaking, has made a lot of movies about prostitution and escorting that are not particularly positive.”

Following the world premiere of Anora, Baker said he had deliberately avoided the “hooker with a heart of gold” cliches.

For Calvert, Baker’s films stand out because they are not really about sex work — they are about the struggles, emotions and humanity of people who happen to do sex work for a living.

“It’s not about the taboo of sex. It’s just about a marginalised community of people who he finds really interesting and wants to explore,” she says.

Conclave — a film about the secretive and cut-throat election of a new Catholic leader, lent an uncanny timeliness by the real-life Pope Francis’s ailing health — appears to have won over many late voters.

Released by NBCUniversal’s prestige label Focus Features, with an impeccable A-list cast led by Ralph Fiennes, it earned top honors from Britain’s BAFTAs, and the Hollywood actors’ SAG Award for best cast.

Almost every surprise best picture Oscar winner in recent times, from Shakespeare in Love and Crash to Parasite and CODA, first won the top SAG prize, said Feinberg.

“I personally put Conclave... it’s just more of a traditional, classic ‘best picture’ film,” one Oscars voter said.

Hollywood film critic Scott Mantz said given Oscars voting closed last Tuesday, the Pope’s ailing health would not affect voting

“Conclave was always a front-runner and a possibility to win because it’s the kind of safe movie that Oscar voters really go for, especially with the hair, makeup and costume design. It’s probably going to win Best Adapted Screenplay. It’s just wild to have real-life news intersecting with Oscar talk,” he said

“The fact that the Pope’s health is failing is obviously terrible news. However, it’s something that a lot of people in the film industry, pundits like myself, have been saying: How crazy is it that life is actually imitating art?”

Meanwhile the voter, anonymous because Academy members cannot reveal their picks, also expressed admiration for The Brutalist, a saga about a Hungarian Jewish architect making a new life in the post-WWII United States.

Adrien Brody, who plays the titular gifted architect and Holocaust survivor has been the presumed favorite to win best actor for months.

Brody has won the prize previously, for 2002’s The Pianist. If he prevails again, he’d join an elite club of double winners including Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson.

But Timothee Chalamet, who earned wide admiration for his pitch-perfect performance as a sardonic young Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, won the Screen Actors Guild Award over Brody, and could prove a spoiler.

At just 29, he arguably has the most star power of any of this year’s nominees and would beat Brody’s record as the category’s youngest-ever winner.

Brody is “still the safer pick,” said Feinberg — assuming enough Academy voters made it through his film’s three-and-a-half-hour runtime.

Several fellow Academy members “were upset that they were locked in a room for that amount of time,” said the Oscars voter.

There could be an even younger winner on the actress side, if a groundswell of support for Anora carries its star Mikey Madison, 25, to the Oscars stage.

But she will have to get past Demi Moore, the 1990s megastar who had enjoyed a sparkling career renaissance thanks to gory body horror flick The Substance.

“Hollywood loves a comeback story,” said the Oscars voter.

It seems that neither woman need fear their fellow nominee Karla Sofia Gascon, of musical narco-thriller Emilia Perez.

Gascon, the first openly trans acting nominee, saw her hopes collapse after years-old racist tweets about Islam, China and George Floyd, a Black man who died at the hands of US police in 2020, went viral.

The controversy also sunk Netflix’s chance of its first best picture win, though co-star Zoe Saldana remains the favourite to win for best supporting actress.

Best supporting actor appears to be similarly locked. Kieran Culkin has won almost everything going this year for his portrayal of a charismatic but troubled cousin on an ancestral road trip through Poland in A Real Pain.

The ceremony itself, hosted by Conan O’Brien on his Oscars debut, is expected to be an emotional affair.

It will honor firefighters who battled blazes that killed at least 29 people and devastated Los Angeles in January.

Hoping to capitalise on a recent ratings uptick, last year’s gala featured a memorable Barbie-themed musical showstopper, producers have enlisted Wicked stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo to perform.

The 97th Oscars begin Monday at 8am (AEDST).