The Best Movies Totally Snubbed by the 2024 Oscars: ‘The Iron Claw,’ ’32 Sounds,’ and More Great Shutouts

Wilson Chapman
·5 min read
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[Editor’s note: this story was originally published in January 2024. We updated and recirculated it in advance of the 96th Academy Awards on March 10.]

The Oscars are a cruel, selective beast. With only 10 movies recognized in the Best Picture race, and five entries in every other category, it’s an unfortunate reality that many high quality, deserving films each year will end up with nothing on nomination day.

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The 2024 Oscar class is no different, with plenty of cries of snubbery coming out after their January 23 announcement. Most of the discussion has been taken up by the shocking blanks for Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, who missed out on Best Actress and Best Director respectively for their work on “Barbie,” the indisputable film juggernaut of the year. Other major surprises included Charles Melton missing out for his breakout turn in “May December,” and Leonardo DiCaprio getting left out of the Best Actor race for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Other surprises proved of the more pleasant sort, with on-the-bubble contenders making it in like Robbie’s “Barbie” costar America Ferrera or Sterling K. Brown in “American Fiction.”

Sure, the “Barbie,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and “May December” hives all have at least a little reason to feel disappointed in how the Oscars turned out for their favorite films of the year. But all three movies at least managed one nomination: “Barbie” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” both made the Best Picture lineup, while “May December” barely made it in by notching a nod in the Original Screenplay race for its acclaimed script from writer Samy Burch.

In the weeks since the nominations were announced, there’s been some backlash to the backlash of the “Barbie” snubs, with critics arguing that the film was well-represented at the Oscars. As IndieWire’s Samantha Bergeson pointed out, Gerwig’s hot pink summer blockbuster managed the impressive feat of eight Oscar nominations — including Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor for Ryan Gosling, and many craft nods — making it the fourth most recognized film this year. “While Robbie and Gerwig (along with a slew of other actors and directors) deserve to be recognized for their “Barbie” filmmaking feat, it doesn’t mean the Academy has to do anything. There were a lot of great movies last year,” she wrote.

And a lot of those other great films weren’t as lucky to get so much as a tertiary nod. Several well-reviewed, positively received movies from major auteurs came out of January 23 without a single nomination to their name, including Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” and Ava DuVernay’s “Origin.” Films that were seen as competitors in the Oscar races ended up short of recognition this year: “All of Us Strangers,” Andrew Haigh’s queer reimagining of Taichi Yamada’s ghostly novel “Strangers,” was floated as a potential nominee in the Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor races, but ultimately failed to crack the top five of either.

“Origin,” an ambitious adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s nonfiction novel “Caste,” proved an especially frustrating snub. As IndieWire Awards Editor Marcus Jones writes, “There are still glaring blindspots when it comes to how Black directors are recognized by the Academy. ‘American Fiction’ filmmaker Cord Jefferson received nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, but will not have a shot at becoming the first Black Best Director winner. That specific detail highlights why there is frustration around a film like Ava DuVernay’s ‘Origin’ going under Oscar voters’ radars, as a Black female filmmaker has never been nominated for Best Director.”

Moving beyond the big names that in another year may have broken through as Oscar frontrunners, there are also plenty of great films released in 2024 that may not be obvious Best Picture nominees, but could have been worthy competitors both in above or below the line categories. Plenty of excellent international features like “Fallen Leaves,” “Godland,” and “Tótem” made it onto the Oscars shortlist before ultimately falling short, while movies like “Suzume” or “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” could have been great selections for the Best Animated Feature lineup. And then there are performances, screenplays, and craft achievements in a variety of overlooked films that all deserved some time in the sun.

The thing all of these films have in common is that they’re in great company. History is riddled with all-time classics that, for whatever reason, didn’t get the attention and Oscar acclaim they deserved in their day. From “Modern Times” in 1936 to “Uncut Gems” in 2019, there have always been masterpieces that the Academy have failed to give their due (other examples: “The Shining,” “The Thing,” “Heat,” “Once Upon a Time in the West,” “Zodiac,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Before Sunrise,” “The Long Goodbye,” and “In the Mood for Love.”) Just because a movie doesn’t make it big at the Oscars doesn’t mean it gets forgotten: sometimes, it can mean the opposite.

As is annual tradition, IndieWire is taking stock of the Oscar nominations this year, and giving some recognition to the unfortunate films that didn’t get their due. Documentaries like “Kokomo City” or “Our Body” and international features like “The Delinquents” and “About Dry Grasses” that didn’t make the shortlists are excluded from the list, despite all being very worthy. Entries are compiled from IndieWire’s previous predictions for nominations, as well as our personal favorites, and are sorted in alphabetical order. Read on for our list of 25 great films that failed to make the Oscar nominations this year.

With editorial contributions by Alison Foreman.

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