| March 13, 2026 | By Katrin Bennhold |
Good morning, world. I know only one person who has watched all 10 films nominated for best picture at the Oscars: my au pair. He’s 22, an aspiring filmmaker and the most dedicated cinema nerd I know.
As for me, I try and fail every year. This year my score is a sorry five out of 10 (though I have seen all the international nominees!). Luckily, my colleague Tom Wright-Piersanti, from our sister newsletter, The Morning, understands. (His score is also a five out of 10.)
Tom has written a guide to this weekend’s Oscars ceremony for those of us who, as he put it, are part of “the silent majority — the ones who loved ‘Sinners,’ who watched ‘F1’ because it was there, who considered going to an art house theater but never got past the Google phase of the plan.” Do you also need some hand-holding? We’re sharing the guide below.
Also:
| The oil crisis worsened China’s new “ethnic unity” law Irish pubs with less booze |
| Clockwise from top left, scenes from “Sinners,” “Hamnet,” “One Battle After Another” and “Sentimental Value.” Neon; Warner Bros.; Focus Features |
Get ready for the Oscars
By Tom Wright-Piersanti
If you’re coming into these Academy Awards cold, here’s the one thing you should know: Two movies, “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” have dominated this awards season.
“Sinners,” directed by Ryan Coogler, set an Oscars record with 16 nominations. It’s as good as advertised — a tale of twin gangsters in Jim Crow-era Mississippi returning home to open a juke joint. Oh, and it’s a rollicking vampire flick.
“One Battle After Another,” a darkly comic thriller directed by Paul Thomas Anderson about radical activists, received 13 nominations. Both movies are artistic blockbusters, films with big ideas and directorial vision that nevertheless brought in hundreds of millions of dollars.
And there’s a new category this year: best casting. To mark the award’s debut, The Times made a game that lets you vote on the worst casting choices in recent cinema history.
Who should win?
I’ll tag in Manohla Dargis, The Times’s chief film critic, who spoke about the performances and the movies she thought were most deserving on a recent episode of The Daily. Some of her picks:
| Renate Reinsve in “Sentimental Value” for best actress: “You see her curiosity, her wonder, her difficulty. And because the filmmaker is not telling us what to think and how to feel, we come to that ourselves.”Ethan Hawke in “Blue Moon” for best actor: “Hawke is a much greater and much more interesting actor than he was when he was cute and didn’t have as many lines on his face.” |
| “Sinners” or “One Battle After Another” for best picture: Both movies, she says, “are speaking to the American experience in a way that American cinema doesn’t necessarily do, particularly from the big studios — these movies feel urgent to us.” |
OK, but who will win?
Do you really want to know? Kyle Buchanan, a reporter who covers the awards season beat for The Times, makes predictions every year, and he’s really good at it. Last year, he nailed seven of the eight big awards. His picks for this year are here; given his track record, consider it a possible spoiler alert.
Kyle thinks there’s a clear favorite in the best picture category, and that the same film will probably win for best director. (I won’t say which.) He says the race for best actress isn’t even close. But he’s unsure about the best actor race. The academy has a bias against handsome younger A-listers, and that could hinder the chances of two front-runners — Michael B. Jordan (“Sinners”) and Timothée Chalamet (“Marty Supreme”).
What about the international films?
We’re in a golden era of global film at the Oscars. The best picture nominees have included at least one foreign-language film every year since 2020, when “Parasite” won the top prize. This year, there are two: “Sentimental Value” from Norway and “The Secret Agent” from Brazil.
Both films are also nominated for best international picture, along with “It Was Just an Accident” from France, “Sirat” from Spain and “The Voice of Hind Rajab” from Tunisia.
Kalle Oskari Mattila, a writer from Finland, noted the trend in a recent story for The Times Magazine. It’s not just because Oscar voters are more international than they used to be, he argues, but because directors abroad — keenly aware of U.S. audiences — now put more nuanced American characters into their films.
I still can’t decide what to watch before Sunday!
Listen, I hear you. Time is finite. I have one last tip: Try out our Anatomy of a Scene video series (each video is minutes, not hours, long). In every installment, a director offers commentary over a scene, explaining how it was made and why it’s important to the film. We have scenes from eight of the 10 best picture contenders. Think of it as an Oscars tasting menu.
Your Oscars reading list
| Tânia Maria, 79, has a modest role in “The Secret Agent.” But her cigarette-puffing performance has made her a star in Brazil.A school employee in Russia filmed students following the country’s wartime curriculum. His footage is the basis of a nominated documentary, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.”Chloé Zhao, the director of “Hamnet,” spoke to The Times about filmmaking and training to become a death doula.The Oscars have a unique method for choosing best picture, akin to a ranked-choice ballot. Our reporter explains how it works in this video. |
| MORE TOP NEWS |
Strangling a vital waterway
Iran has begun laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for oil and natural gas, using smaller boats, according to U.S. officials. Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, had vowed yesterday to keep blocking the strait in his first public statement since taking power.
The U.S. temporarily removed sanctions on Russian oil that is currently at sea, allowing it to be shipped to buyers around the world. However, oil prices barely budged, remaining at around $100 a barrel. (My colleague Rebecca Elliott explains in the video above why oil matters so much to the global economy.)
Israel launched a new wave of strikes on central Beirut, near hip bars and high schools, crystallizing fears that its campaign against Hezbollah is expanding.
Other developments in the war:
| Up to 3.2 million people are now displaced inside Iran, according to the U.N. refugee agency.A U.S. refueling plane, which military officials said was part of the war in Iran, crashed in Iraq. Rescue efforts were underway.The war has threatened the supply of the liquefied petroleum gas that powers stovetops in India’s homes and restaurants.Lebanon is engulfed in its second major war in less than two years, and the loyalty of Hezbollah’s base is being tested as never before. |
| OTHER NEWS |
| China, as part of an assimilation campaign, approved a new “ethnic unity” law that makes Mandarin Chinese the language of instruction in all schools.A driver rammed a truck into a synagogue outside of Detroit and later died after an exchange of gunfire with security guards.A Moscow court handed down life sentences to 15 men in connection with a 2024 massacre at a concert hall that killed at least 149 people.Israel’s military dropped a case against five reserve soldiers charged with brutalizing a Palestinian detainee, citing difficulties with the evidence.In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a drone strike killed three people, including an aid worker.The Ukrainian military will make available millions of drone videos and other battlefield data to help train A.I. models.Smiljan Radic of Santiago, Chile, won the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor. |
Top of The World
The most clicked link in your newsletter yesterday was about how China has cut military flights near Taiwan.
| SPORTS |
Paralympics: Ukraine accused the International Paralympic Committee of mistreating its athletes and displaying pro-Russia bias.
Tennis: These are the players who have stood out so far at Indian Wells.
| OBITS OF THE DAY |
For International Women’s Day this week, The Times revisited the legacies of notable women across the generations. Not to rank them, but to re-examine them with the benefit of distance — to see what was emphasized, what was minimized, what might have been left unsaid.
They include:
| Jiang Qing, Mao’s widow, who helped carry out the Cultural Revolution in China |
| Virginia Giuffre, an outspoken voice in the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking scandalHannah Arendt, an incendiary political philosopher who escaped Hitler’s GermanyMadame Nhu, the glamorous hostess who gained political power during the Vietnam War |
| MORNING READ |
Strip mall restaurants serving dishes from around the world are a staple of multicultural Canada. Deep in Mississauga, just outside Toronto, a huge plaza called Ridgeway has become a hub for nightlife, dining and culinary tourism.
In the three years since it opened, Ridgeway has ballooned to include some 120 restaurants, mainly Middle Eastern and South Asian. But the plaza’s popularity has created problems, mostly because of crowds and noise. Read more about the suburb that never sleeps.
| AROUND THE WORLD |
Same pubs, fewer hangovers
Pubs have long held a near-hallowed status in Ireland. But in Dublin these days, more of the golden lagers and creamy stouts they’re pouring are alcohol free.
There’s a dip in alcohol consumption nationwide, particularly among younger people, according to industry figures. For many, going alcohol free is now part of a normal night out. It helps that non-alcoholic options, once relegated to the margins of menus, are now abundant at most bars.
“You’re still getting that Friday night vibe,” one pubgoer said, “without the Saturday morning hangover.” Read more.
| RECIPE |
This large-format tarte Tatin is nontraditional. It’s made almost entirely on a sheet pan in the oven, rather than in a skillet on the stovetop. But its flavors of caramel, apples and buttery pastry are classic.
