Oscars 2023: Best Cinematography Predictions

We will update all our Oscar predictions throughout the season, so keep checking IndieWire for the latest news from the 2023 Oscar race. The nomination round of voting will take place from January 12 to January 17, 2023, with the official Oscar nominations announced on January 24, 2023. The final voting is between March 2 and 7, 2023. Finally, the 95th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 12, and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. ET/ 5:00 p.m. PT.

See our initial thoughts on what to expect at the 95th Academy Awards here.

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The State of the Race

“Elvis” DP Mandy Walker made history March 5, becoming the first woman cinematographer to win the prestigious Feature prize at the 37th annual ASC Awards (held at the Beverly Hilton). Now she’s poised to break the Oscar glass ceiling March 12 at the 95th Academy Awards. But the Australian cinematographer has one last hurdle in overcoming British cinematographer James Friend, who also has momentum after winning the BAFTA for “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

It’s a fascinating contrast in visual styles: Walker’s brilliant mix of authentically lit historical musical numbers and a surreal-looking carnival ride for the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Best Actor nominee Austin Butler) versus Friend’s harrowing, POV-like journey on the World War I battlefield, with long takes accompanying the unrelenting artillery attacks and massive carnage.

Yet Walker has the advantage in winning the ASC award, which Friend did not compete for as a fellow member. She beat some heavy hitters as well: Roger Deakins (“Empire of Light”), Darius Khondji (“Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”), Greig Fraser (“The Batman”), and Claudio Miranda (“Top Gun: Maverick”). Deakins and Khondji also compete against Walker and Friend in the final Oscar round along with Florian Hoffmeister (“TÁR”), who won the Indie Spirit Award. This marks the first non-American cinematography race since 2013, which signifies the growing globalization of Academy voters as well as the influence of early BSC nominations.

Walker follows last year’s Ari Wegner (“The Power of the Dog”) and Rachel Morrison (2018’s “Mudbound”), as only the third woman to be nominated by the Academy’s cinematography branch (Wegner and Morrison were also the first two women to be nominated by the ASC but neither were considered Oscar frontrunners.)

With “Elvis,” the first musical biopic for both director Baz Luhrmann and his go-to cinematographer, Walker matched his delirious take on Presley’s life with the visual thrill of watching a musical legend get too close to the sun. She chose the large format Alexa 65mm camera with a series of different customized lenses to capture Elvis’ personal trajectory and cultural impact throughout the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.

Friend shot Edward Berger’s acclaimed German anti-war drama (a Best Picture nominee as well as the favorite to win Best International Feature) like an immersive horror movie with a mixture of large format cameras and a seasonal color palette to mark Paul’s (Felix Kammerer) ordeal from idealistic young soldier to hollowed-out zombie.

The legendary Deakins (consecutive Oscar winner for “1917” and “Blade Runner 2049”) scored his 16th nomination, yet finds himself in the position of dark horse for exquisitely lensing Sam Mendes’ underappreciated love letter to ’80s cinema on the English coast, which offered the right landscape with beautiful skies and the gray sea.

Hoffmeister (who won the top prize at Poland’s Camerimage International Film Festival) digitally shot Todd Field’s Best Picture nominee about uncompromising composer-conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett, the Best Actress nominee) as a clinical dance between subjectivity and reality. He was particularly inspired by German New Objectivity, especially photographers Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth.

“Bardo” marks Khondji’s first nomination since “Evita” and his initial collaboration with director Alejandro González Iñárritu. For Iñárritu’s mind-blowing, semi-autobiographical journey back to Mexico City, Khondji (second-place prize winner at Camerimage and winner of the festival’s International Federation of Film Critics Award) evoked the city as a wildly imaginative mindscape through the blurring of reality and memory.

Below are the nominees ranked in order of likelihood of winning:

Mandy Walker (“Elvis”)
James Friend (“All Quiet on the Western Front”)
Roger Deakins (“Empire of Light”)
Florian Hoffmeister (“TÁR”)
Darius Khondji (“Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”)

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