Back in the fall of 2020, as Nomadland was picking up steam amidst that year’s covid-derailed Oscar season, director Chloé Zhao felt like an insurgent; less than six years later, she’s firmly enmeshed in the institution. So it goes with the annual awards show whirlwind, which seems to scoop up filmmakers at random, and, more often than not, refuses to let go for years thereafter. It happens all at once, but not immediately, with some helmers building up a trusty following in advance of the Academy’s notice, and others toiling in anonymity before the nomination morning changes everything. Zhao derives from the former camp, having released two movies (Songs My Brothers Taught Me and The Rider) that grossed less than 5 million dollars collectively before she was suddenly a household name. Yorgos Lanthimos hit the opposite track, having curried favor in the art house community with the likes of Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer before 2018’s The Favourite turned him into a laurel hoarding mainstay. And stay he has, reappearing in this year’s Best Picture slate with Bugonia, joined there by Zhao’s Hamnet.

All told, six of this year’s ten nominees were guided by someone who’s been here before, and with the exception of Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), they’re all relatively new to the spotlight. The works of Guillermo del Toro were widely celebrated before 2017, though it wasn’t until The Shape of Water was finally tabbed for Hollywood’s top prize that his films’ trophy time presence felt like a foregone conclusion. Ryan Coogler and Joseph Kosinski had been viable blockbuster artisans for a while, but Black Panther and Top Gun: Maverick, respectively, changed the way voters regarded their flicks in a way that feels permanent. Membership is hard to come by in any exclusive club, but once it’s attained, revoking it is near impossible. Which brings us to Josh Safdie, Clint Bentley, Kleber Mendonça Filho, and Joachim Trier, the four new inductees at next month’s ceremony. They’re not exactly household names, but if recent history tells us anything, that’s about to change. With a move toward the center of film culture on the imminent horizon, now’s as good a time as any to put their themes, styles, and interests into context by looking back as a means of looking forward, so for this February’s monthly feature, we’re looking at The Early Works of First Time Best Picture Contenders. 

Describing the last 100 days as Josh Safdie’s first rodeo may feel disingenuous, but that’s only your heart lying to you about Uncut Gems’ ultimate fate. Widely regarded as one of 2019’s best (and most stressful) flicks, the Adam Sandler vehicle couldn’t muster a single notice from grouchy old Oscar, an unfathomable slight at the time that’s only grown more curious following the success of Marty Supreme. The differences between the two, which include Marty’s 1950’s period setting and slightly sunnier disposition, are modest compared to their similarities, with both films hewn to ambitious, ill-mannered men running like hell from a seemingly unavoidable fate. They’re hellbent on working the viewer into a tizzy, and whatever reason Academy members have for only now seeing the vision, it’s not due to playing nice. Safdie’s priorities haven’t budged an inch over the last two decades, and anyone who disagrees clearly hasn’t seen Heaven Knows What.

Set, as all Safdie flicks are, in the grimy underbelly of New York City, the film stars first time actor Arielle Holmes as Harley Boggs, a twenty-something heroin addict ever in search of her next score. Drugs may be the true love of her young life, but they’re bunking in her heart alongside Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones), a fellow narcotic enthusiast who serves as her on-again, off-again paramour. The switch is down when we make their acquaintance, spurring Boggs to regain his attention by any means necessary, from jealousy-baiting romances to a public suicide attempt. Preferring fly-on-the-wall observation to anything resembling traditional narrative structure, Heaven follows her from one sordid affair to the next as we watch between the cracks in our fingers.

Or at least someone did, though the number of in-house attendees was modest indeed. Determining a movie’s success or failure based solely on financials is small-minded at best, but it’s worth noting the dearth of receipts for Heaven, as well as the other three films we’ll be exploring later, when discussing where their makers are today. Cutting his teeth in cinematic obscurity allowed Josh, alongside brother and former co-director Benny, to test the limits of his nausea-inducing paradigm, as well as good taste in general. Casting a slew of non-professionals, many with criminal records, doesn’t often fly when overbearing studio executives start checking in, but Safdie’s preexisting proof of concept eventually led to more enviable budgets. It also, unfortunately, made space for some grievous behavior, as reported by Page Six earlier this year.

The article, published in the immediate aftermath of Marty Supreme’s nine Oscar nominations, details a case of indecent exposure on the set of 2017’s Good Time, with the unnamed offender’s crime oriented toward an underaged cast member. Josh was allegedly unaware of her status as a minor at the time, the sort of mishap that occurs when keeping things fast and loose serves as a guiding principle. Whether the ongoing firestorm around the director hampers his career going forward remains to be seen, but the righteous indignation it’s produced is more than a little disingenuous. The voices that are currently crying foul are the very same ones who previously championed the Safdies’ new-fangled version of cinema vérité, and the tension between respect and exploitation has always been central to their efforts. If you’re banishing any of their movies from polite society, you might as well take the rest with you.

Holmes knew exactly what she was signing up for back in 2014, parlaying a chance meeting with Safdie into the headlining role she was born to play. That’s not an exaggeration: after crossing paths on the subway, Josh commissioned her to write a memoir that would be used as Heaven’s template, recreating the events of Holmes’ life with their real instigator at the center of the frame. The result is wholesale believability, undergirded by the same type of amateur co-stars that would eventually find Josh in hot water. If they feel picked off the streets and thrown directly on screen, it’s because they were, with the lone exception of Jones, who’s predictably the only performer who threatens to break the fourth wall. Sporting a terrible wig and a verbal cadence from the gates of hell, his effort sticks out from a movie that’s otherwise filled to the brim with naturalism. One wishes he’d take a hint from Buddy Duress, who plays miscreant Mike with an easy-going braggadocio, though the rest of his offerings would be better left untouched.

Most involve a needle, the kind that crops up constantly in Heaven Knows What’s mercifully truncated 94 minute runtime. It feels much longer, which isn’t a detriment so much as a reality for any film that chronicles drug abuse, houselessness, and sexual deviancy this viscerally. No one could accuse it of being an easy watch, but Safdie has a knack for locating immovable truth amidst a sea of squalor, laying most scenes in pockets of the city that more mannered citizens dare not go, filling them with dialogue that never once feels overwritten. If all the mania, powered by Ariel Pink and Paul Grimstad’s throbbing electronic score, isn’t enough to make your hair stand on end, at least a mid-movie sequence in which Harley logs on to Facebook to quietly observe the life she abandoned will send cold sweat down your spine. From Heaven to Supreme, Safdie’s films are physical and merciless, a pair of attributes that show no signs of abating. 

Which makes his films irreconcilable with the work of Clint Bentley, who chooses heart-swelling beauty over the grisly untoward on all seven days of the week. That’s not so say he’s afraid of a little emotional damage, as anyone who’s seen and cried through the latter half of his 2026 Best Picture nominee Train Dreams will tell you, but on the evidence of only two films, he prefers it served on the most comely of platters. Dreams’ woodland setting is never short of ravishing, openly courting Terrence Malick comparisons that cinematographer Adolpho Veloso somehow manages to fulfill without a hint of embarrassment. If filming outdoors was easy, everyone would do it, and while the Netflix drama’s cosmetic accomplishments would seem to necessitate years of practice and training, Bentley appears to have found the fast track out there at the races.

Horse races, to be specific, the kind that Bentley’s 2021 debut, Jockey, charts with a deadly seriousness that constantly risks tipping over into parody. Such are the dangers of charting the sporting amusements of the rich with all that solemnity, though it’s not like Jackson Silva (Clifton Collins Jr.) is getting a slice of the pie. The titular rider has only a dingy trailer to show for his efforts, along with enough scar tissue to give Freddy Kruger a run for his money. His numbered days in the saddle could steer a mournful character piece all by themselves, but Bentley, alongside writing partner Greg Kwedar, throws in some familial intrigue for good measure by introducing Gabriel Boullait (Moisés Arias), an up-and-coming equestrian who claims to be Silva’s long-lost son.

If that all sounds a little closer to a Lifetime channel original movie than prestige cinema, then you’re picking up on what Bentley and Kwedar are putting down. They pitch their stories right on top of the thin line between melodrama and schmaltz, committing to a soulful, teary tone that works far better in some venues than others. When telling an operatic tale that gently morphs, over the course of decades, into primordial allegory, as in Train Dreams, the potential for treacliness is well suited to the yarn at hand. When relaying the trials and tribulations of inmates at a correctional facility, as in 2024’s Sing Sing, the swooping camera movements and soaring string arrangements start to blot out the compassion they’re meant to intensify. Jockey lands somewhere in the middle, though only on the strength of its three key players.

Collins Jr. is a true celluloid chameleon, with 35 years worth of diverse roles in divergent genres to his name, which makes his wholesale credibility as a gruff pseudo-cowboy all the more impressive. The history he carries on his shoulders defies any and all histrionics, though he’s not alone in seeming more like a documentary subject than a seasoned thespian. Molly Parker, who plays his horse-training potential sweetheart, is just as credible, an everywoman capable of projecting exhaustion, excitement, and well-deep empathy with a simple glance. They would both feel more at home at your local grocery store than up on the silver screen, an underacting accolade that extends to Arias as well, though they all benefit greatly from Bentley and Kwedar’s reticence to fill in the gaps. The stable’s news rider is both cocksure and visibly insecure, the sort of interpersonal contradiction that most flicks either avoid or overexplain. Arriving at a sort of three person hivemind, the performers in Jockey are all valedictorians of show-don’t-tell university, and while the movie itself clearly enjoyed a similar education, some classes were missed along the way.

There’s an inherent contradiction in holding melodrama and authenticity in equal esteem, a chaffing that proves deleterious, but only periodically. The film’s soap opera set-up quickly dissipates when the horse racing microcosm that Bentley’s built develops tantalizing side doors and pockets of lived-in intrigue, then reemerges in a sequence that could only be described as an AA meeting for riders recovering from injury. This vacillation is constant, turning the whole endeavor into a Rorschach test on the grounds of triteness. Whether the drunken fireside dance that Collins Jr. and Parker share is comely or corny is in the eye of the beholder, tempting the viewer onto either side of the divide during its brief existence. You buy into the metaphorical sparks between the pair, but the literal ones, lovely as they may be, flood the frame in a radiant strain of credulity.

At first glance, Kleber Mendonça Filho could be accused of forwarding the same push-pull, at least from the perspective of an American audience. Stateside viewers are accustomed to surreality that announces itself with volume and frequency, marking the Brazilian writer/director’s affinity for trojan horse oddity as quite the curio. His home country produced a Best Picture nominee just last year, but anyone buying a ticket to Filho’s The Secret Agent expecting something in line with 2024’s I’m Still Here is in for quite the bait-and-switch. Despite covering an analogous period and string of events, Agent never lets its freak flag descend below half-mast, the strange contours and side missions all relayed with the uncluttered frankness of a slice-of-life flick. It’s a peculiar balance, one that Filho has been cultivating since 2019’s Bacurau. 

Located on the dusty outskirts of society, Filho’s third feature, which was co-directed by Juliano Dornelles, has all the optical makings of a ‘normal’ movie. Fictitious as the eponymous municipality may be, its population of community leaders, social outcasts, and everyone in between isn’t so far flung as to be unrecognizable. What is unfamiliar, to them and us alike, is the ongoing government quarantine, forcing the citizenry to rely on previous residents like Teresa (Bárbara Colen) to shuttle in water and medicine from beyond city limits. Adding insult to injury, the collective also hosts unwelcome visits from incumbent mayor Tony Junior (Thardelly Lima), whose attempts to trade paltry supplies for votes in the upcoming election are too brazen for any thinking person to take seriously. Besides, who has time to keep up with local politics when there are flying saucers in the sky?

The UFO, which makes its appearance somewhere around 20 minutes in, is the first concrete piece of evidence that something mystical might be afoot, though the inkling is present from the moment the opening credits recede. Teresa’s drive into town, wherein she maneuvers past a toppled pile of empty coffins, so immediately recalls Train to Busan that international film fans will be forgiven for their zombie-based assumptions, and when she arrives, a previous acquaintance wordlessly slips a tiny tablet into her open mouth. Later, when teaching his class of adorable, eager children, wizened educator Plínio (Wilson Rabelo) notices that Bacarau has been removed from every available map of the area. You can hardly blame the cartographers; whenever an outsider permeates their borders, all residents go into hiding, causing their guests to openly wonder if they’ve happened upon a settlement of ghosts.

For nearly an hour, Filho and Dornelles have you eating out of the palms of their hands, lining up one titillating sequence after another before you start to notice the momentum slowly downshift. As is the case with most films that hold their mysterious cards this close to the vest, the enigma is more compelling than the reveal, but the letdown of Bacurau’s latter half isn’t just about the ‘what’ that it’s chosen, but also the ‘how.’ Like its titular hamlet, each masterfully devised and executed scene feels isolated from its surroundings, stirring up true kineticism and unpredictability before shutting things down and starting from scratch all over again. The Secret Agent also suffers from a case of the parts being far more tantalizing than the whole, though the world it inhabits, complete with saturated colors and an impossibly handsome tour guide in Wagner Moura, is decidedly more inviting. By the time this one winds to a close, you may want to run for the hills.

It’s a path that Bacurau’s eventual antagonists, a collection of volatile, bloodthirsty Americans, would have been better off taking than their preferred course of poorly controlled mayhem, a lesson they learn the hard way. Revenge, in this particular case, is a dish best served hot to the global hordes of red, white, and blue detractors, as well as the country in question’s left-leaning populace. There’s pleasure in seeing a handful of ugly patriots get their grisly comeuppance, but Filho and Dornelles’s staging is unimaginative, and the carnage simply isn’t as vivacious as the elliptical offerings that have come before. In celebrating community solidarity while observing its escalation with a nervous side eye, the filmmakers locate a tune of queasy triumph that’s well worth singing, but it’s got nothing nothing on passages like a mid-movie entry where a stampede of unmanned horses gingerly strolls into town in the dead of night without explanation. As the scenes like it decrease in number, so do the film’s narrative possibilities, which once felt endless.

Comparing Bacurau to Reprise, released 13 calendars apart and from completely different parts of the world, unspooling yarns that could hardly be more antithetical if they tried, is impossible for many reasons, and that pruning of potentials might be the tallest hurdle. Writer/director Joachim Trier’s 2006 debut feature is intent on stacking them on top of each other, building out a universe of alternate realities despite rarely leaving its homebase of Oslo. It’s there that we meet Erik and Phillip (Espen Klouman Høiner and Anders Danielsen Lie, respectively), a pair of aspiring novelists in their early twenties who open the film by submitting their manuscripts to a local publisher in tandem. What follows is a montage, the kind that pops up in Reprise just as often as examples of more standard dramaturgy, zooming back and forth through time and space like a flowchart of every feasible outcome from the smallest of movements.

Oscar enthusiasts will recognize the structure from his 2026 Best Picture nominee Sentimental Value, though the tone of these flights of fancy has shifted over the 19 seasons that separate the two flicks. Years will do that, and with the Norwegian helmer now firmly in middle age, he’s more determined to excavate the past than ruminate on the future. He’s no less novelistic, mind you; Value is relentlessly literary and layered, with a journey into the fissures and emotional duress of the Borg family that reaches all the way back to World War II in order to fill out its margins. It’s deeply impressive, wonderfully performed, and a little cold to the touch, a story of heartbreak and secret pain that uses its head to express its heart. Old souls found plenty to recommend the approach, to the tune of nine Academy Award citations, but training the same technique on more youthful subjects begets more vivacious results.

After all, this sort of free wheeling ideation is the arena of the juvenile, and Trier, who was all of 31 when Reprise made the film festival rounds, is obviously speaking to and about himself. The creative hunger inside both Phillip and Erik is unmistakably his own, a metatextual framing that’s made clear as day by the ambitious architecture and accompanying vivacity. It can’t hold still in a good way, spelunking into caves of the self-absorbed mind that hindsight tends to cordon off from public access. Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt were too inexperienced to know shame in the mid aughts, and we’re all the better for their unmanicured enthusiasm.

Things would be better for Phillip if he had this level of context, though his love lorn angst would be desperately missed. Looking and moving like the Scandinavian answer to Jeremy Strong, Lie is knowably nubile and sullen, wearing the scars of a recent break-up with dream girl Kari (Viktoria Winge) like so many badges of courage. Their attempted reconciliation, which takes the form of recreating an early-courtship trip to Paris, is both relatable and nasty, with his erstwhile lover pantomiming previous moments of passion like a Barbie in a dollhouse. Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), Value’s fictional vaunted filmmaker and patriarch of the Borg clan, attempts a similar gambit by casting his grandson in an analogous role to one that daughter Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) filled some lifetimes ago, though the subplot is played for pathos. It results in a great scene between father and child, but you miss the friction of intentional wrongdoing and salad days helplessness.

Those fleeting hours of running wild and free are also fertile ground for the accumulation of interests and influences, all of which Reprise gleefully lays out on the table for lapsed hipster inspection. The soundtrack, ranging from Joy Division to Le Tigre, pulls double duty, fleshing out the players through their oft-discussed obsessions while providing a jolt of electricity to a flick that might have otherwise been undermined by its fixation with words. The sprinkles of unexpected humor, a mainstay of Trier’s filmography, juice things up in a kindred fashion, though Value sees them dwindle in both frequency and fervor. The sight of Gustav gifting his aforementioned grandson a wildly inappropriate heap of DVDs is good for a chuckle amongst the cinephiles, but it’s no match for the belly laughs that Reprise summons with its penchant for absurdity and slapstick comedy. 

Broad as the day is long, these stabs at frivolity would likely play well with Erik’s eventual following, composed of the everyman type that diminishes the prestige of an artist by virtue of their unlearned interest. Turns out he’s not a natural savant like his best mate, a notion that’s underlined by the casual chauvinism that defines his friend group. Rather than chiding this pack of foul-mouthed man-children, Trier treats them with the compassion of someone who knows a passing phase when he sees one, gently suggesting that lived experience will eventually sand off some lamentable edges. Same goes for Erik’s writing; a regrettable starting place is a starting place all the same, and Reprise’s ultimate promotion of hard work and endurance is remarkably absent of condescension in light of the intellectual grandiosity that’s come to define Trier’s work.

He’s different now, but he’s also the same, a finding that’s in keeping with all of the previously discussed storytellers. It’s good to have a home base, and while reading too much into any creator’s prerogatives with such scant data to peruse is often a fool’s errand, the evidence suggests that these four plan to stay the course. Safdie’s perspiring authenticity and forward thrust, Bentley’s glassy-eyed attunement to wonder, Filho’s slippery slope into the uncanny valley, and Trier’s studied treatise on the human condition are all mooring factors for their purveyors, and if recent history is to be trusted, they’ll drop a similar anchor in awards season waters for years to come. Meet the new class laurel time contributors, and be nice about it. They’re likely here to stay.