Oscars 2026: One Battle After Another To Sinners, Who Will Win Vs Who Should Win
While the 98th Academy Awards nominations were announced in January, it’s been anything but a predictable time since. OTTplay's critic Rahul Desai lists his predictions for the night's big wins.
Mar 11, 2026
In an ideal world, it would walk away with at least 10 wins from its 16 nominations at the 2026 Oscars.
Sinners broke the record for the maximum Oscar nominations by a film (16) ever, and this honour seems to be giving it a last-minute push across the board. But One Battle After Another (13) is still the odds-on favourite to take the big ones. The momentum hasn’t broken for Paul Thomas Anderson and his team, even if they might end up with no acting trophies this year. (Read the review | Watch the movie)
The bigger swing of the two, Ryan Coogler’s vampire-gothic-period-horror-musical thriller is the sort of cinematic experience that’s almost too memorable for its own good. Easily the “movie event” of 2025, it combines pulpy entertainment with social spectacle like no other: a rare genre movie with dense themes projected onto the big screen in the most creative way possible. In an ideal world, it would walk away with at least 10 of its nominations. (Read the review | Watch the movie)
The Marty Supreme star started out as the early favourite, but the rhythms seem to have been split between Brazilian master Wagner Moura and now Sinners’ Michael B Jordan in recent weeks. It’s going to be a close call between Chalamet and Jordan, and his latest comments about “ballet and Opera” may not have rubbed Academy voters the right way either. But it’s difficult to imagine that it will derail an Oscar campaign for a young actor who’s annoying and self-serious about achieving greatness — but then also walks the talk. (Read the review)
Honestly, honestly, it’s not the Moonlight-coded diversity pick at all. It’s a genuine Tour de Force performance — a double role no less — that’s easy to overlook because of the ‘genre’ of the film and its striking set pieces. He’s so good that we take it for granted, just like we do Moura’s unrestrained and lived-in turn for The Secret Agent.
Bryne has been around for so long that it’s easy to take for granted how versatile and shapeless she is. Her performance as a psychotherapist losing her grounding to reality is all chaos and fury in a film that pounds the viewer into submission with its disorienting imagery and aggressive cutting. It’s an exhausting and disturbingly authentic turn — one that might be remembered beyond the accolades it doesn’t get.
This is easily the most stacked and open category yet, with all the actresses — except perhaps Elle Fanning — splitting the honours over the last few months. There’s no clear favourite, it depends on the ‘theme’ of the night, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Amy Madigan pull it off for playing the most haunting ‘character’ of the year in a horror film that now has a pop-cultural canon of its own. Look beyond the creepy white American aunt at your own peril. (Read the review | Watch the movie)
This is more of a personal wish, because the talented Norwegian actress may be unheralded in this list, but her performance as the relatively ‘stable’ sister of the volatile protagonist of Sentimental Value is deceptively complex. This is also the one category that remains open to token international representation (which sometimes works out because they’re mostly just better).
He started as the favourite, and it’s also the most showy performance in a stellar field — Oscar-baity but also a campy horror-film villain in a loaded social actioner. All the white characters are ‘amusing’ for how oblivious and tone-deaf they are in the film, but Penn’s reptilian Trumpianism is already the stuff of meme-fied legend.
Who Should Win: Stellan Skarsgard (Sentimental Value)
The Swedish veteran is incredibly low-key but amply Skarsgardian (yes, it’s a family trait) as a legendary film-maker trying to make his most personal movie to reconnect with his estranged actress-daughter. It’s an assured and unsentimental turn in a film that’s way more intimate and relatable than it lets on.
No shade here, but PTA is a sure-shot not only for one of his better movies but also because of his cumulative directorial legacy so far — an arthouse icon that the mainstream is dying to reward. It’s an impossible film to pull off and amplify the way he’s done, he’s at the top of his game, and there’s no denying him his first and long-awaited statue.
Coogler pulled off a modern miracle in an age of saturated studio spectacles, is all.
There is no second place here. There is no competition for most voters.
An unfilmable book is brought to life in the most hypnotic and sweeping fashion, rarely sacrificing the intimacy of its protagonist at the altar of the America it spans.(Read the review)
I have a sinking feeling about Marty Supreme nabbing this one, but even by the Academy standards of writing doozies, it’s hard to look beyond this masterpiece.
That’s right.
The slow-burning, meditative and politically seismic film seems to have surpassed the apolitical Sentimental Value for the precise reasons many thought it wouldn’t. Among the international-film giants this season, it’s in pole position to take at the very least this category if not one of the main awards.
Who Should Win: It Was Just An Accident (Iran)
Given the war at hand, it’s probably the worst timing for Jafar Panahi’s film to win at an American event, but if only the voters could see that Panahi is just as critical of his home country and the fascism of that culture that Westerns often weaponise to fight proxy wars. Not to mention that it’s Panahi’s soul on a platter. (Read the review)
You have to see a blockbuster like Sinners to believe just how visually ambitious and culturally expressive it is. That history-of-black-music sequence alone deserves its own category. Not even the wave-roads of One Battle After Another might not change the mind of most voters.
The ethereal narrative trek through early 20th century America, its woods, its industrial beauty and its working-class grief will remain one of the most enduringly shot films of this decade. The film doesn’t have the publicity machinery or studio cred behind its campaign, but on merit alone, I can’t think of a better historical fever-dream posing as a movie.
Technically, this should be the category that hints at the Best Picture winner early on, even though it’s going to be the first ever Casting Oscar — a milestone on its own. It’s hard to imagine that the cast of OBAA a perfect mix of young and old, walking away empty. But it’s also reasonable to conclude that this might be a consolation prize for the lack of acting awards for a film. Casting is a worthy narrative craft on its own, but I hope it isn’t equated with the individual honours.
That’s the pattern of the night. An electrifying ensemble for an electrifying film.