For me, the Oscars has always been more than just a film award ceremony. It’s the world championship of powerful stories. What is special about this year’s ceremony is that I will have a chance to cheer for my own team: Netflix’s documentary “Winter on Fire. Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” has been nominated for the Best Documentary award.
True, this EuroMaidan Revolution chronicle by Evgeny Afineevsky is not officially representing Ukraine in the competition – all the rights belong to a U.S. company. But it’s the best presence Ukraine can hope for at the Oscars, since our country doesn’t even have a local Oscars committee to select a Ukrainian entry for Best Foreign Film.
The reason is simple: Two Ukrainian film organizations, the Association of Producers and the National League of Cinematographers can’t decide which one of them has the right to form an Oscars committee. Because of that, there was no entry from Ukraine for this year’s Oscars.
As a cinema lover and a screenwriter by education, I follow the Oscars closely, and while I’m sad that Ukraine won’t have its own film competing for an award, it’s still interesting to see who the money says will be taking an Oscar home.
According to www.oddschecker.com, a website that collects information from more than 20 betting offices that accept Oscars bets, the Best Picture award will go to “The Revenant,” Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s dramatic story of Hugh Glass, the guide of a fur trading expedition in the 1820s who fights for survival after being mauled by a bear and left to die by his fellow hunters.
Adam McKay’s “The Big Short,” the story of four financiers who predicted the housing bubble collapse of 2008, and Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight,” which follows some Boston Globe reporters as they uncover cases of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests in 2001, are the next most probable winners , according to betting agencies. Like the Hugh Glass story, these stories are based on real events.
The outsiders, according to the bookies, are George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies,” John Crowley’s “Brooklyn,” Ridley Scott’s “The Martian” and Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room.”
The bookmakers’ predictions are usually pretty spot on. I too liked “The Revenant”, a powerful story of survival told in an engaging and comprehensible way.
But I want the bookmakers to be wrong this year, as they predict no win for “Winter on Fire.”
According to them, Afineevsky’s movie will probably lose out to “Amy”, a documentary about the famous British singer Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011.
Nevertheless, I’m going to get up before dawn watch the ceremony, which starts at 2 a.m. Kyiv time. The ceremony is like a movie itself – a reflection of social and political events, as well as racial and sexual conflicts. A light comedy has no chance of a win if it ends up in the same nomination as a war drama, a biopic, or a film about racial or sexual intolerance.
The academy’s voting members always keep up with the times. The Best Picture category offers many examples: “Casablanca” (1944), a story of a choice between love and duty during World War II, “Platoon” (1985), a Vietnam War drama, “Driving Miss Daisy” (1991), which focused on segregation in the 1950s, and many others.
So here’s hoping “Winter on Fire” benefits from the Academy voting members’ inclination to showcase political and social themes – even if the smart money says it won’t.
