The Oscars are almost here! On the thirty- seventh episode of ATFT, my friends Emm- winning photojournalist, writer/ director Samy El- Kamel, and director Craig Ienne Pedroza join this year’s panel to discuss the Oscar nominated films and share our predicted winners! This episode is explicit.

2024 was a mixed year for us… Cole and Craig believe 2024 was a great year for cinema while Samy and I don’t quite share that opinion. This year’s awards season has become plagued by various controversies and many believing this is not as competitive as last year’s Oscar race. For the 2025 Academy Awards, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez earned the most nominations(13) this year whileboth The Brutalist and Wicked tied for second, earning 10 nominations each.Other films that received many nominations are Conclave, Anora, and The Substance.So many categories are up in the air with no film expected to sweep, leaving audiences torn on who will win. Will it be Sean Baker or Brady Corbet who takes home the Director Oscar? How about who will win Best Actress: Demi Moore, Fernanda Torres or Mikey Madison? These are just two of the widely debated categories. We will soon learn the answer on Sunday, March 2!

This is the first time each of the ATFT regulars are all together for an episode! This is Cole’s eighteenth appearance on ATFT (seventh on this wide release), Samy’s eleventh (fourth on the wide release), and Craig’s  sixth appearance (fourth on the wide release). This is the third annual Oscars special! Cole and I recorded the 2022 Oscars special through the Relevnt app, which is currently in the vault. The first wide released Oscars special (give Episode 15 a listen) was last year’s 2023 Oscars special with Cole, Craig, and past guest Lina Smith. Since the Oscars is the “Super Bowl for film fans”, this episode was aimed to be more of a Sports Center- format. This episode was recorded on February 6, 2025. 

Cole recently won an Emmy for his work with First Coast News on the news package “Waiting for Rebuild”! Watch the full news package here!: https://youtu.be/Pa1m0qm8h-Q. Samy’s latest short film “Waveform” will be making the rounds at film festivals soon so stay tuned by following his production company on Instagram and Youtube @barefootpythonmedia! Craig recently directed the short film “Floating Daisies” which will also begin its film festival run soon. Stay updated on that project by following @floatingdaisiesfilm on Instagram and Craig on both Instagram and Youtube @iennefilm!

In this episode,Cole, Samy, Craig and I go through each category and discuss our predicted winners. The categories are discussed in the order of which the categories were read at last year's Oscars. There are very few categories we unanimously agree on. Arguments are had, impressions are hilariously done, and the power of friendship lives on. All this and much more on the latest episode of All the Film Things!


ATFT Announcement!: All the Film Things will be back on March 26! Stay updated by following @all.the.film.things on Instagram! 



Music Credit:

CINEMA by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/

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