2026 Best Picture nominees, ranked

List by Matthew Donlan

The world is shit. Perhaps we think it's more shit now than ever before. But that's not the case, it has always been shit. But! It's also always been great. Somewhere on that spectrum of shit to great sit the 10 films nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards.

Like a HSC English teacher trying to make a student's chosen text work for the curriculum theme, each year I attempt to draw a common thread through the nominees. From my perspective, this year's 10 films seek to answer one fundamental question, posed against the backdrop of shitness we find the world in - what do we live for?

If the Academy were ever to ask me to vote, the order below is how they would appear on my ballot, from worst to best.

No. 10 - Hamnet (Chloé Zhao)
We start with the film that is most likely to be screened in a HSC English class, Hamnet. While my gripes with this film persist (read here), it is a strong articulation on how to continue life after immense grief. After gut-wrenching trauma, Shakespeare buries himself deep in his art while Agnes attempts to move on with her daily life. In its climactic act, these two processes collide, acting as a catharsis for both. Even after death, their son lives on. Hamnet says that we live to remember.

No. 9 - Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)
For Elordi's monster, the question of life is intrinsically connected to his inability to die. Faced with immortality, a burden he did not ask for, he moves between violence and love. Radical empathy is beget by pointless hate, and then the cycle repeats. His sole pursuit is companionship, for someone to share this life with. And so perhaps, in Frankenstein, the answer to why we live is to share it.

No. 8 - F1 (Joseph Kosinski)
We live to drive. What more do I need to say about the car-go-fast movie?

No. 7 - Train Dreams (Clint Bentley)
Adapted from the novella of the same name, Bentley's Train Dreams is a portrait of a quiet life well-lived. Spanning 80 years of our protagonist's life, it is a Malick-inspired life-appreciating film. Despite hardships, missed opportunities, devastating loss and the passage of time taking its toll, Robert maintains an optimistic outlook, finding more solace in the way sun shines through the trees than in glory or achievement. Those are the moments we live for.

No. 6 - Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Alien conspiracy theories. Kidnapped CEOs. Bees. For Teddy (Jesse Plemons) he does these crazy things out of love for his mother. But I think, more interestingly, this film makes a comment on humanity as a whole. From the perspective of the Andromedans, humans were an experiment, and one which has failed. Our violent tendencies took over and in an instant, unknown to everyone, our history ended. In its final moments, in the peace of a human-free Earth, the film calls on us to do better.

No. 5 - Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)
We live to play table tennis! But also, we live to pursue greatness. Despite his final match being solely for entertainment, Marty achieves success. He experiences the feeling of winning. It's the love of the game (the art) that drives him.

No. 4 - Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
The vampires in Coogler's musical-western could have been a simple stand-in for white supremacists. But instead, he took a nuanced approach to chart a connection across seas. The Irish, as victims of America's forced-migration programme, had their culture consumed, turning them into perpetrators against the African-American clients of the juke joint. In a powerful action scene, Michael B Jordan's Smoke fights for his right to exist and to protect his cultural autonomy.

No. 3 - Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)
This question, for what we live for, is one that Nora grapples with herself. A successful theatre actress with crippling stage fright, generational trauma has seeped its way through her family tree. Yet, despite a disconnection from her father, it seems they know each other better than first thought. This re-connection, sparked through their lineage, invites a process of healing to begin. So, despite the hardness of life, we live for that chance to grow.

No. 2 - One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
In OBAA's first act, Pat and Perfidia, as part of the French 75, fight to make a better world. Through revolutionary and subversive means, they seek to take down injustices. But, by the time their daughter is a teenager, that fight has faded in Pat (now Bob), only re-igniting when Willa's life is under threat. By film end, Willa has taken up the baton from Bob and continues the fight. Though it may never end, we live to fight for a better world.

No. 1 - The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
The Secret Agent is a film all about memory. Unfolding like a memory itself, the film shifts between perspectives, decades and places to carefully reveal the struggles of living under a dictatorship. It is playful with form and execution to build a searing atmosphere. Via Marcelo/Armando's life, the film says that the act of living is it's own defiant act of resistance. We live to survive and in the hope we will be remembered.