The 2019 BMD Alternate Oscars: Writing, Directing, Cinematography, And Editing

Welcome to the 2019 Birth.Movies.Death Alternate Oscars! We’re now in the third annual incarnation of this new tradition, in which the BMD staff pick nominees from the films Oscar ignored, and readers vote for the winners. There are plenty of good films nominated in the “real” Oscars, but this is our chance - and yours - to give some lovin’ to the films that were too small, too weird, or too badass for the Academy to recognise.

We’ll have a new set of nominees up every Wednesday, leading up to the Academy Awards ceremony itself, and each week we’ll reveal the winners from the previous salvo of categories. So place your votes, and may the best movies win. 

Last week, we ran polls on the acting categories. Best Actress was the surest lock of all, with Toni Collette’s Hereditary performance scoring 63% of the vote, while Ethan Hawke also handily took out Best Actor for First Reformed. The supporting categories were more hotly contested, with Black Panther’s Michael B. Jordan just squeaking past Paddington 2’s Hugh Grant, and Tilda Swinton’s multi-role turn in Suspiria winning in a satisfyingly all-around even race. Congratulations to those folks, and thank you all for voting.

This week, we’re looking at some of the big-ticket categories - the kind that come up front in the credits, appear in the credit block on posters, and so on (but tragically and unforgivably, won’t all appear in the Oscar telecast). Cast your votes:

Thanks for voting! We’ll be back next week with the nominees for the best pictures of the year - overall, foreign-language, animated, and documentary. Feel free to praise your choices for this week - or grouse about who we left out - in the comments below.

This article is part of B.M.D. Guide To: The 2019 Alternate Oscars