oscars 2023

Taylor Swift’s All Too Well Oscar Hopes Are Long Gone

So casually cruel in the name of being honest. Photo: Taylor Swift/YouTube

Maybe it got lost in translation. Maybe she asked for too much. Maybe her short film was a masterpiece until the Academy tore it all up. Regardless, Taylor Swift’s All Too Well won’t be up for an Oscar, failing to make the shortlist for Best Live-Action Short Film. The snub came after Swift, who wrote and directed the 15-minute movie, worked hard on the campaign trail. She screened it and spoke at both the Toronto and Tribeca film festivals, waxed about her favorite directors, showed her directorial bonafides with a behind-the-scenes video, and even got into a “Directors on Directors” conversation with Martin McDonagh for Variety. Still, that wasn’t enough for the Academy, which has never nominated a music video. (Kendrick Lamar’s We Cry Together short also didn’t qualify.) When Swift promotes her feature debut in a few years, she’ll remember this all too well.

Swift’s Oscar hopes for this year aren’t entirely dashed either — with her song for Where the Crawdads Sing, “Carolina,” making it on the Best Original Song shortlist. It’s shaping up to be one of the starriest years yet for the category with songs by Rihanna, Lady Gaga, the Weeknd, and Selena Gomez making the cut. (One snub there? Recent winners Billie Eilish and Finneas for their Turning Red song, “Nobody Like U.”) If Swift needs to commiserate with a woman who knows a thing or two about snubs, she can hit up her fellow shortlistee Diane Warren — eyeing her 14th Oscar nom but yet to eke out a win.

Below are the full shortlists for Best Live-Action Short and Original Song along with other categories including Best Documentary Feature and Short, International Feature, Animated Short, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound, and Visual Effects.

Best Documentary Film

All That Breathes
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Bad Axe
Children of the Mist
Descendant
Fire of Love
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song
Hidden Letters
A House Made of Splinters
The Janes
Last Flight Home
Moonage Daydream
Navalny
Retrograde
The Territory

Best Documentary Short Film

American Justice on Trial: People v. Newton
Anastasia
Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices From a Plantation Prison
As Far As They Can Run
The Elephant Whisperers
The Flagmakers
Happiness Is £4 Million
Haulout
Holding Moses
How Do You Measure a Year?
The Martha Mitchell Effect
Nuisance Bear
Shut Up and Paint
Stranger at the Gate
38 at the Garden

Best International Film

Argentina, 1985 (Argentina)
Corsage (Austria)
Close (Belgium)
Return to Seoul (Cambodia)
Holy Spider (Denmark)
Saint Omer (France)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany)
Last Film Show (India)
The Quiet Girl (Ireland)
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Mexico)
The Blue Caftan (Morocco)
Joyland (Pakistan)
EO (Poland)
Decision to Leave (South Korea)
Cairo Conspiracy (Sweden)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

All Quiet on the Western Front
Amsterdam
Babylon
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Blonde
Crimes of the Future
Elvis
Emancipation
The Whale

Best Original Score

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
Babylon
The Banshees of Inisherin
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Devotion
Don’t Worry Darling
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Nope
She Said
The Woman King
Women Talking

Best Original Song

“Time” from Amsterdam
“Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength)” from Avatar: The Way of Water
“Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
“This Is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All at Once
“Ciao Papa” from Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
“Til You’re Home” from A Man Called Otto
“Naatu Naatu” from RRR
“My Mind & Me” from Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me
“Good Afternoon” from Spirited
“Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman
“Stand Up” from Till
“Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick
“Dust & Ash” from The Voice of Dust and Ash
“Carolina” from Where the Crawdads Sing
“New Body Rhumba” from White Noise

Best Animated Short Film

Black Slide
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
The Debutante
The Flying Sailor
The Garbage Man
Ice Merchants
It’s Nice in Here
More Than I Want to Remember
My Year of Dicks
New Moon
An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It
Passenger
Save Ralph
Sierra
Steakhouse

Best Live-Action Short Film

All in Favor
Almost Home
An Irish Goodbye
Ivalu
Le pupille
The Lone Wolf
Nakam
Night Ride
Plastic Killer
The Red Suitcase
The Right Words
Sideral
The Treatment
Tula
Warsha

Best Sound

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
Babylon
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Moonage Daydream
Top Gun: Maverick

Best Visual Effects

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Jurassic World Dominion
Nope
Thirteen Lives
Top Gun: Maverick

Taylor Swift’s All Too Well Oscar Hopes Are Long Gone