Every year since I started voting in critics’ awards, I’ve engaged in the time-honoured tradition of effectively spoiling my ballot.

In other words, I vote for my favourite picks, even if they have zero chance of being nominated by anyone else.

For an insight into my proclivities, in 2023, this was my Best Actor lineup:

Alessandro Borghi, The Eight Mountains (Italy/Belgium)
Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers (UK)
Benoît Magimel, Pacifiction (France/Spain)
Luca Marinelli, The Eight Mountains (Italy/Belgium)
Harris Dickinson, Scrapper (UK)

Scott was the only actor who had anything close to an Oscar campaign. And if you don't have an Oscar campaign, it's pretty hard to even get critics to vote for you.

(They have to have seen the movie to vote for it!)

I nominated The Eight Mountains and All of Us Strangers in pretty much every other category, including film, editing, sound, screenplay, direction, and cinematography.

That year, I also had the cheek to put American documentarian Frederick Wiseman down for Best Editing and British documentarian Sophie Fiennes down for Best Director (for a film she made of her brother Ralph’s one-man T.S. Elliot poem show).

(Frankly, it's criminal that Wiseman doesn't already have an Oscar for Editing and Documentary. He does have an honorary one, though!)

I’ve been putting Joachim Trier and his collaborators in every single category I could since it was an option — the first time I recall voting was in 2017 with Thelma — back when I could count on one hand the number of members who had also nominated it.

In fact, I remember the two other people who voted for it for editing.

(The same editor he's been working with since the beginning, Olivier Bugge Coutté!)

These days, as the academy diversifies and the gatekeepers of the industry shift, someone I would have voted for anyway will sometimes even have a shot at a nomination — in my critics’ groups and at the Oscars.

I remember getting to vote for Joachim Trier in the final ballot in 2021 for The Worst Person in the World because it had been nominated in multiple categories, and it felt like: Whoa, something has shifted.

So before the Oscar nominations come out tomorrow morning, here are some highlights of the various critics’ group ballots I submitted this year:

Best Picture

(The top 5 also got my Best Director votes)

• Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
• Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski)
• Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Laura Piani)
• A Little Prayer (Angus MacLachlan)
• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
• Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
• Pepe (Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias)

Best LGBTQ Film

• Misericordia
• I’m Not Everything I Want to Be
• Cidade Campo
• The Wedding Banquet
• Young Hearts

Documentary

• Afternoons of Solitude
• I’m Not Everything I Want to Be
• Riefenstahl
• Life After
• Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk

Lead Actor

• Josh O’Connor, The Mastermind
• Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value
• Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
• David Strathairn, A Little Prayer
• Mahmoud Bakri, To a Land Unknown

Lead Actress

• Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
• Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
• Diane Kruger, The Shrouds
• Amanda Seyfried, Seven Veils
• Erana James, We Were Dangerous

(If I’d seen it in time, Nicole Beharie in Love, Brooklyn would have usurped one of them!)

Supporting Actor

• John Magaro, The Mastermind
• Charlie Anson, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
• Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another
• Ralph Fiennes, 28 Years Later
• Jack O’Connell, Sinners

Supporting Actress

• Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
• Gaby Hoffman, The Mastermind
• Celia Weston, A Little Prayer
• Jane Levy, A Little Prayer
• Youn Yuh-Jung, The Wedding Banquet

Cinematography

• Grand Tour
• The New Boy
• Sentimental Value
• Sound of Falling
• The Mastermind

Editing

• The Mastermind
• Caught by the Tides
• Sentimental Value
• I’m Not Everything I Want To Be
• Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

Sound Design

• Caught by the Tides (My #1 by a large margin)
• Die My Love
• Sentimental Value
• Sound of Falling
• The New Boy

Caught by the Tides is one of the few films here I haven’t covered yet, but it’s an incredible work of editing — stitching together outtakes from Jia’s films over the years into a coherent narrative — and sound design.

My other hobby is spoiling my ballot in the Visual Effects category for things nobody would vote for, because it’s the subtle stuff that matters.

E.g., I voted for All of Us Strangers in 2023 for all the wind-in-the-trees effects.

This year, I voted for the in-camera floating orb of light in The New Boy and the visual effects to bring the house to life across eras in Sentimental Value.

Finally, on Oscar morning, I’m rooting for One Battle After Another for Costumes.

If, like me, you fell in love with Gillian Armstrong’s Little Women 30+ years ago, you may have also fallen in love with the costumes in it by Colleen Atwood. She’s also behind the costumes in One Battle, and they’re iconic.

If you had a ballot, what would you spoil it with?

Alex

P.S. Curious why Sentimental Value appears in almost every category? We'll start unpacking that in The Deep Focus: Oslo, August 31st — where we’ll use Trier’s Oslo, August 31st as a lens to view Sentimental Value. More soon!