The 96th Academy Awards released its full list of nominations for the 2024 Oscars on Tuesday with a series of Asian names and titles in the running in some major categories, including A24’s “Past Lives” and Studio Ghibli’s “The Boy and the Heron.”
Celine Song has already won a series of awards, both as director and as a screenplay writer, for her feature-length directorial debut, “Past Lives.” Now, the romance drama film is nominated for Best Picture and Best Writing (Original Screenplay). It’s about two childhood friends in Korea who fall in love, but are forced to grow apart. Their lives intersect over the course of 24 years as they try to understand their love for each other, even though they cannot be together.
Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) explore New York City and what they mean, or meant, to each other. (Screen still courtesy of A24 Films.)
The film competes with “Oppenheimer,” which leads the Oscar nominations with a total of 13 nods, followed by “Poor Things” with 11, “Killers of the Flower Moon” with 10, and “Barbie” with eight.
This will be the first Academy Awards where the films had to meet two of the four representation and inclusion standards set forth by the Academy to be able to run for the Best Picture nomination.
“The Boy and the Heron,” written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was nominated for Best Animated Film; “Godzilla Minus One”—Takashi Yamazaki’s movie which was one of the biggest box office successes in Japan in 2023—was nominated for Best Visual Effects; and the Japanese film, “Perfect Days,” was nominated for Best International Feature Film.
Other Oscar nominations:
“To Kill a Tiger”—Best Documentary Feature Film
“Island in Between” and “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó”—Best Documentary Short Film
“Red, White and Blue”—Best Live Action Short Film
The 2024 Oscars ceremony will be on March 10, 2024 and will be broadcast live on ABC.