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OSCAR PICKS www.postmagazine.com 20 POST JAN/FEB 2026 Atmos. Set in 1952, Marty Supreme stars Academy Award nominee Timothée Chalamet in a kinetic portrait of a fast-talking New Yorker determined to turn the overlooked sport of table tennis into his personal springboard to glory. "Marty is the quintessential dreamer, in that he's the ultimate romantic and the most relentless optimist," says writer/director Josh Safdie, who co-wrote the feature with his longtime collaborator Ronald Bronstein, who also edited the film and is nominated for his work. Two-time Academy Award nominee Darius Khondji, reuniting with Safdie after collaborating on Uncut Gems, shot Marty Supreme on 35mm using Arriflex cameras and vintage anamorphic lenses. For the film's tense table-ten- nis matches, Khondji used multiple cameras and wide-angle lenses to capture the game's high- speed back-and-forth. "We don't watch any dailies during production," notes Safdie. "We enter the edit, and now the direc- tor and the writers are morons. I hate them. Ronnie hates them too. And I hate the director, obviously." Danish/Norwegian writer/director Joachim Trier's family drama Sentimental Value had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. It was then select- ed as the Norwegian entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars, and nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. Trier's creative team included his longtime collaborators DP Kaspar Tuxen, who shot on 35mm, as usual, editor Olivier Bugge Coutté (who's also nominated) and colorist Julien Alary. Cinelab in London did the 35mm film processing and scanning, and post was done at Storyline Studios in Oslo. "I always use them for everything from editing to sound and VFX, and I love post," says Trier. "My edi- tor is a key collaborator on all my films, and balanc- ing character development with so many characters was really interesting but tricky on this film." Other films in the Best Picture race — F1, Frankenstein, Bugonia, Train Dreams and The Secret Agent — look like long shots, but Academy voters can be unpredictable. Directed by Clint Bentley, Train Dreams, like last year's winner Anora, may end up surprising everyone. Starring Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones, the lyrical period dra- ma tells the story of logger Robert Grainier, a de- voted family man who finds himself separated from his wife Gladys (Jones) and daughter as he works largely in isolation with the railroad to open up the untamed West in 1920s America. It premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it was snapped up by Netflix for a reported $16 million, and it was shot by Brazilian-born cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, who shot the 2021 Sundance hit drama Jockey, also directed by Bentley. The film was shot almost entirely on-location in Washington, largely near the Canadian border and around Seattle, and Bentley and Veloso decided to locally on shared NEXIS storage. "I don't ever edit during the shoot," says Zhao, "and I always do the first pass. After that, Affonso comes in and we talk a lot about the edit, and it's a very close collaboration from then on. I love post, especially the edit." Visual effects were done by One of Us UK. The final DI was completed at Harbor with colorist Damien Vandercruyssen working alongside Zhao and Żal. Because of scheduling changes, the team finished both sound and picture deliverables in Los Angeles after wrapping up the majority of final post in the UK. The film was mastered in all tradi- tional outputs, as well as Dolby Vision and Dolby Marty Supreme was shot on 35mm film. London's Cinelab handled 35mm processing for Sentimental Value. The Secret Agent was shot using Arri's Alexa 35.