The Substance
Nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, The Substance is a film about appearances. As such, how things look was of paramount importance to French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat. The story follows fading celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle (played by 62-year-old Hollywood stalwart Demi Moore) in her attempt to return to youth and beauty by injecting a neon potion carrying the titular name. Just as trippy as the body-switching body horror of Elisabeth and her younger persona ‘Sue’ (played by Margaret Qualley) is Elisabeth's uncanny apartment. With blood-coloured plush carpet, a tiled bathroom reminiscent of a 1960s hospital and floor-to-ceiling views over a hauntingly lonely simulacrum of Los Angeles, the flat is distinctly unrooted in a time or place. In reality, Coralie chose a location in an urban corner of the French Riviera, with views over palm trees creating a semi-convincing (but still confusing) version of LA. The interiors are similarly warped, neither retro nor futuristic, from the flat-screen TV to the vintage wired landline phone. As such, the lonely and isolating apartment highlights all the themes of the film, where neither the audience nor the protagonists can root themselves in any one true reality.
The Substance earned five Oscar nominations, including best picture.
Anora
It's with immense awe and disbelief that Anora's witty and wonderful protagonist (played by Mikey Madison) approaches the house of her new potential client. So magnificently bawdy is the mansion that we can't help but share in her astonishment. The brainchild of writer and director Sean Baker, Anora follows Ani and Russian teen billionaire Vanya's turbulent, troubling, violent and hilarious (yes we're talking about that bizarrely Shakespearean fight scene) relationship, and the mammoth mansion provides the perfect seedy backdrop for everything to unfold. A 14,000-square-foot mansion in Mill Basin, Brooklyn was used to film the majority of the scenes. Fittingly, the house was once reportedly the most expensive listing in Brooklyn, with an asking price of $30 million in 2013.
Anora is one of ten films nominated for Best Picture at the 2025 Oscars, along with an array of other nominations including Best Actress and Best Director.
The Brutalist
Described by Archinect as ‘a bold cinematic achievement that reflects the raw, unfiltered spirit of its titular architectural style,’ The Brutalist is a brutally long (at almost four hours) film following László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor, as he rebuilds his life in postwar America. In a sea of grey concrete and harsh lines, the movie uses Brutalism and architecture as physical manifestations of László's struggles. At the heart of the plot is the Institute, a sprawling community centre and László's mammoth legacy project. “I wanted the Institute to reflect both Tóth’s genius and the trauma he carried,” comments Judy Becker, The Brutalist's production designer, who was influenced by the clean lines and starkness of architects like Tadao Ando for the project.
The Brutalist received ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Brady Corbet, Best Actor for Adrien Brody and Best Supporting Actress for Felicity Jones.
A Complete Unknown
If you want to learn about New York's music history, then a scroll through the happenings at The Hotel Chelsea will paint a brilliant picture. The hotel, which has undergone major renovations in the last few years, has long since been the place “where legends linger" in New York City. From Andy Warhol to Dylan Thomas, the hotel is a revolving door of celebrity parties and overdoses. So, what better way to celebrate the premiere of the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown than with an after-party in the hallowed halls of Hotel Chelsea? The new film follows Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) from his start as an ‘unknown’ on Greenwich Village’s folk music scene in 1961 to his 1965 show at the Newport Folk Festival. Whilst various parts of New York and New Jersey were used to sub in for Bob Dylan's New York, The Hotel Chelsea was actually used for filming. For more history on the legendary institute, we recommend a viewing of Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel (2022).
A Complete Unknown is nominated for several Oscars, including Best Actor, Best Director and Best Costume.
Conclave
Based on Robert Harris' thriller of the same title, this film revolved around the claustrophobic world of a conclave, in which the world's cardinals are secluded in the Vatican to vote for a new Pope. Much of the film is set in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican's guesthouse. Built in the 1990s, the simple building has around 140 sparsely furnished rooms. Conclave brings it brilliantly to life as a monochrome, almost Brutalist space, with long grey corridors through which the cardinals move in their contrasting red finery. The sets perfectly conjure the bleakness and impersonality of the building – its small square windows, its boarding-school-like dining room and uncomfortable furniture. At times it feels almost dream-like, as Ralph Fiennes' conscientious Cardinal Lawrence moves through it, hunting down the truth behind the papal candidates' campaigns.
The film also features beautiful shots designed to represent the Vatican, especially at the beginning where the red and white cardinals gather in a courtyard, smoking, gossiping and talking on their phones. There's also a beautiful recreation of the Sistine Chapel, where they gather for the votes themselves. All in all, for an unusual portrait of Rome (not to mention a gripping plot-line), it's a must-see.
Conclave was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture.
Dune: Part Two
From Wadi Rum, A UNESCO World Heritage site known as the “Valley of the Moon”, to the harsh desert landscapes of Arraki, the whole Dune universe is built on epic locations. We were particularly captivated by the appearance of The Tomba Brion, designed by Carlo Scarpa, which serves as a striking location in Dune: Part Two. Its unique concrete vaults, circular windows, and intricate architectural details create a visually arresting setting, enhanced by beautifully crafted stone walls, staircases, and pathways. The play of light and shadow adds to its cinematic allure, making it an ideal location for the film’s otherworldly aesthetic. Open to the public, this architectural masterpiece offers visitors the chance to experience its artistic and structural brilliance firsthand.
Dune: Part 2 received Oscar nominations for Best Pictures, as well as for Visual Effects, Sound, Production Design, and Cinematography among others.
I'm Still Here
“Forced disappearances were one of the cruellest acts of the regime," says Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) in Walter Salles' tragic and intimate portrait of Brasil's military dictatorship in the 1970s, "Someone can come into your house, take your husband away, and then say…'he's gone'.” Place is of utmost importance in Brazil in 1971, where a space can transform from a safe haven to a pilfered shell in an instant. The production design by Carlos Conti (known for The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), The Kite Runner (2007) and On the Road (2012)) had a strong focus on authenticity and reality, and is a beautiful image of style at the time. In a film about family and togetherness, the design of the Paiva's apartment was essential, and provides the perfect backdrop for their life - both infectiously joyful and viscerally painful - to unfold, in the form of family dinners, adopted stray dogs and spontaneous dance parties.
The film is nominated for Best Picture and Best International Feature.
Wicked
Transforming a much loved theatre production into a film always presents its challenges, but Jon M. Chu’s Wicked magically pulls off the feat. It is, in part, thanks to the significant amount of real sets created by production designer Nathan Crowley, that the film is so successful. Where the stages of Broadway and the West End are unable to fully immerse the audience in Oz, the film is unlimited.
The sets are at their best at Shiz University, a beautiful blend of Gothic architecture, Islamic domes and Portuguese tiles that reflect colleges and universities around the globe. The library is a particular high point, with a circular book storage system, curved walls and decorated ceilings. It’s Elphaba and Glinda’s dorm room, however, that really brings home the magic. There’s plenty of real world inspiration to be found here, with a ceiling adorned in botanical drawings, half panelling and arched windows. It’s wickedly good.
Wicked has 10 Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
Nosferatu
No, you haven't accidentally turned down the brightness on your screen, but so dark and gloomy are the interiors of Nosferatu's Kafkaesque castle in ‘Transylvania' that you might think you have. As the age-old adage goes: all the better for scaring us with. After a trippy hike through Romania, sweetly naive Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is met by a hauntingly empty carriage that escorts him up to his fate, surrounded by howling wolves for good effect. Filmed at Corvin Castle in Romania and Pernštejn Castle in the Czech Republic, careful production design by Craig Lathrop created an epic world that felt both claustrophobic and cavernous, dungeon-like and sprawling. It's here that Thomas meets the flesh-eating Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), whose mammoth, rattling figure is perfectly manifested in the castle.
Together with the director Robert Eggers, the production designer built around 60 sets at Barrandov Studios in Prague, including the interiors of Orlok’s 16th-century Transylvanian castle.“It’s very important to try to make sure that we create a holistic, real world for these characters to be living in, so that these supernatural elements or horrific elements kind of hit harder,” Lathrop said. “Because I had such a long lead-up, I really felt I knew this world when we started to draw it and build it, and there was a detail that I had down.”
Nosferatu is nominated for four Oscars, including Best Production Design.
