If the 2025 Gotham Awards nominations have shown anything, it’s that the recent changes that made more films (with bigger and bigger budgets) eligible for recognition has not changed the awards body’s overall independent spirit.
Yes, awards season frontrunner “One Battle After Another” is this year’s nominations leader, with six nods, but it is quite literally sandwiched between humble Sundance darlings “Lurker” and “Sorry, Baby” on the Best Feature ballot.
This is the first year that Gotham Awards expanded its Best Feature category to 10 nominees, and the third year since the organization got rid of its budget restrictions determining which films are eligible (this year’s nomination leader reportedly cost $130 million, almost quadruple what the Gothams’ budget cap used to be). Often, those constraints are shed with the thought that populism will become a larger factor in what films are nominated.
Consider a film like “Sinners” (another film that would’ve been ineligible a few years ago), which is so far the fifth highest-grossing film in the U.S. this year and also has an 84 on Metacritic. Yet the Gotham Awards nominations committee, consisting of mostly film critics, neither recognized Ryan Coogler’s latest film nor Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” (an 89 on Metacritic) in the top categories they were now eligible for — despite how well they are pegged to do in the upcoming Oscars race.
Famously, when the Academy Awards expanded its Best Picture category back to 10 nominees in 2009, it was in reaction to the notion that Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” the highest-grossing film of the previous year, had been snubbed for that award. And, sure, that resulted in “Up” becoming the first animated film since “Beauty and the Beast” to be nominated for Best Picture and James Cameron’s “Avatar,” still the highest-grossing film of all time, to be recognized in the category as well. But it was Kathryn Bigelow’s indie darling “The Hurt Locker” that won the Oscar in the end.
Ultimately, even though critics — or, in the case of the Oscars, those who work in the film industry — are capable of loving blockbusters just as much as the general population, that does not mean that there are any ways for awards bodies to guarantee that those are the contenders they will vote for. With critics groups especially, there is an element of advocacy added to the equation. More unconventional nominees like “East of Wall,” “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” “Train Dreams,” and even “Bugonia” are from distributors that have other films they are prioritizing for the Oscars race. And then there are films like multiple Gotham nominee “Familiar Touch,” released by Music Box Films, that do not have the awards budget of a major conglomerate, and more often count on awards bodies like the Gothams to serve as the for-your-consideration campaign they needs to stay in conversation for the Oscars.
There is even a certain underdog element to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” especially in terms of its commercial success, as compared to the “snubbed” “Sinners.” At the beginning of the year, both projects were seen as examples of Warner Bros. Pictures studio chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy being out of their depth, paying too much for films that had too little box office potential, but while “Sinners” proved triumphant, “One Battle After Another” is still being dinged for most likely not returning on its investment, despite being 11-time Oscar nominee Anderson’s highest-grossing film of all time.
So while the Best Feature expansion at this year’s Gotham Awards still did not shake out the way a few big Oscar contenders wanted it to, it’s possible it’s because those films are suffering from a good thing already: commercial success.