Best awards contender movies to stream this weekend Feb. 7, 2025
We have suggestions if you’re looking for an awards contender to watch on streaming or on-demand video this weekend. Our list includes an Oscar-nominated top pick that recently became available for home viewing, another Oscar-nominated new release on VOD, a movie that wasn’t nominated for an Oscar but probably should have been, a past Oscar nominee that would make for a nice double feature with the top pick, and a classic crime thriller available on streaming for the first time.
Top pick: Anuja
One of the leading live-action short nominees, Anuja, is now available to stream on Netflix. The 22-minute film tells the story of sisters Anuja (Sajda Pathan) and Palak (Ananya Shanbhag), orphans in Delhi who work in a sweatshop. When the title character, a 9-year-old with an aptitude for math, gets an opportunity to go to school, her older sister sacrifices to make it happen.
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The film is written and directed by Adam J. Graves and produced by Mindy Kaling and past Oscar winners Shine Global (the 2015 doc short winner Inocente) and executive produced by Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and made with the support of the Salaam Baalak Trust, a nonprofit. It provides food, shelter, and education to street children and child laborers in Delhi. Sajda Pathan is from the program. The film is a potent piece of political advocacy in the form of a drama.
Other picks: September 5
This Best Original Screenplay nominee is now available on VOD. It tells the true story of the ABC Sports news crew that was on the ground for the Munich massacre during the 1972 Olympic Games. It’s a tight, taught journalism thriller from director Tim Fehlbaum, who shares the screenplay nomination with writers Moritz Binder and Alex David.
All We Imagine As Light
This drama from writer-director Payal Kapadia almost certainly would have been nominated for Best International Feature had India or France submitted it as their selection, but alas, it will have to settle for the Cannes Grand Prix, over a dozen critics’ group awards, and a pair of Golden Globe nominations. It’s a beautiful and intimate but universal film about the lives of two nurses who are roommates in Mumbai and the issues of love, money, and social pressure they face. It’s available on VOD now.
After you watch Anuja, watch this: The White Tiger
Another Priyanka Chopra Jonas Netflix production, The White Tiger, earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2021 but remains somewhat under the radar and underrated. It follows Balram (Adarsh Gourav), who, like Anuja, is an intelligent person from an impoverished background. But in his quest to pull himself out of poverty, he finds that the game is rigged, which means he has to play dirty. It’s an innovative, darkly funny drama from writer-director Ramin Bahrani that features Chopra Jonas in a supporting role.
Rewatch this: To Live and Die in L.A.
Oscar-winning director William Friedkin’s classic crime thriller To Live and Die in L.A. recently became available to stream for the first time, so check it out on Prime Video. It’s a deeply cynical neo-noir starring William Peterson as a Secret Service agent who works in financial crime investigation, the agency’s other function. He’s trying to bust a counterfeiter (Willem Dafoe) who killed his partner, and he’ll go to any length and break any law to do it. It’s Friedkin’s L.A. counterpart to The French Connection, with its own unbelievable car chase going the wrong way up a freeway exit ramp.
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