Oscar season 2025: Big milestones and record-breaking contenders emerging from film festivals

The film festivals in Venice, Telluride, and Toronto have showcased a range of potential Oscar contenders for 2025. Among them are Kathryn Bigelow, whose nuclear thriller *A House of Dynamite* could make her the first woman to win a second Best Director Oscar, and Ryan Coogler, whose *Sinners* could make him the first Black director to win Best Director. Bigelow, who won in 2009 for *The Hurt Locker*, is aiming to cement her legacy with another victory. Similarly, Chloé Zhao, who made history in 2021 as the first woman of color to win Best Director, is generating buzz with *Hamnet*, which adapts a novel about Shakespeare’s grief. The Oscars are also seeing fresh faces like Dwayne Johnson in *The Smashing Machine*, which could see him nominated for Best Actor. Meanwhile, many other promising films are still to be released, including Paul Thomas Anderson’s *One Battle After Another* and Bradley Cooper’s directorial effort *Is This Thing On?*. The competition in 2025 could lead to several records being broken, making it one of the most exciting Oscar seasons in recent memory.