Nominations 2017

What kind of preparation is needed to play a vocal coach to a tone-deaf would-be opera singer? Simon Helberg, who must face this very challenge as Meryl Streep’s long-suffering teacher in Florence Foster Jenkins, had a very specific kind of training, shared with the movie’s illustrious lead actress: “We both came together in New York, and had both been practicing, basically, shitting all over the great pieces of music in the canon of classical and opera”, Helberg shared with us. “She was in New York and I was in LA, and we had been working on this crazy thing, and we came together to see if it made sense in a studio in New York.

Hot on the trail of a series of peculiar bank robberies in dusty, half-dead towns in West Texas, Jeff Bridges’ sheriff Marcus Hamilton cuts a powerful profile – he’s at the same time a lawman from the halcyon days of the frontier and a dim shadow of those legendary times, fading with a land that seems abandoned by all. “The basic thing about a great script, this was one that really rung true.

When Juan, a feared drug dealer ruling over a mean corner in a tough Miami neighborhood, comes across a scared, trembling kid in the opening scenes from director Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, the audience does not expect the layers of care and tenderness that frame the encounter. The surprise is a credit to Mahershala Ali’s nuanced performance of a character based on the life experiences of playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose stage play inspired the movie.

As Randi, a young woman rebuilding her life after a devastating loss, Michelle Williams delivers a quietly powerful performance that adds a whole other dimension to Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By The Sea. “When you love someone so much right next to that thought is what would I do if I lost (that person), Williams stold us.

A boy from a remote village finds himself, by accident, alone and lost in the streets of Calcutta – and, from there, in a comfortable home in Tasmania, adopted by loving Australian parents. In Lion, the cinematic version of this real life story, Nicole Kidman plays Sue Brierley, the boy’s devoted adoptive mother – and her first Australian character in a long while.

“On Moonlight it was heavy on set because I only had the three days to shoot that role so because it was so intense I just kind of had to stay in the skin of Paula as much as I possibly could to get through”, Naomie Harris told us, describing the experience of creating a key character in writer-director Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight: Paula, a drug addict and reluctant mother to Chiron, the film’s protagonist. The daughter of a strong and successful woman, Harris admits she had “reservations about playing a crack addict”, a bravura performance that earned her this nomination.

Reprising the role she played on Broadway opposite Denzel Washington, Viola Davis is a quiet storm of determination, anger and devotion as Rose, the wife of the hard-headed, short-tempered Troy (played again by Denzel Washington, who directed the film from a script by playwright August Wilson). “August Wilson wrote the screenplay more than two decades ago and it lends itself to the cinematic experience because really at the heart of the story it's just about a family and we've seen these epic stories before”, Davis told us.

Colin Farrell, The Lobster. Working with writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos  to build the sad-sack bachelor David, the protagonist of the dystopian love story The Lobster, Colin Farrell was given a mantra of sorts: “(Lanthimos) mentioned the word soft and I just got softer and softer and softer”, he told us in Cannes.

Divines, directed by Houda Benyamina, France. Meet Dounia, a petite tough and brash mixed race teenager from the eastern Parisian suburbs.

Kubo And The Two Strings, directed by Travis Knight. A boy with extraordinary powers goes on an epic quest to find his late father’s armor and vanquish an evil spirit.