Marty Supreme, without a doubt one of the best films of 2025, ultimately went home empty-handed after Sunday’s Oscars ceremony.
Josh Safdie’s ping-pong masterpiece, starring a better-than-ever Timothée Chalamet as the relentlessly driven Marty Mauser, was up for nine total nominations at the 98th Academy Awards: Best Picture; Directing; Actor in a Leading Role; Original Screenplay; Casting; Production Design; Cinematography; Costume Design; and Film Editing. It won none of them.
For 30-year-old Chalamet, this marks his third loss in the Best Actor category after previous nominations for Call Me by Your Name in 2018 and A Complete Unknown in 2025. The path is still wide open, however, for Chalamet to clinch the title in the years ahead. Lest we forget, Leonardo DiCaprio scored four nominations before finally taking one home for The Revenant in 2016.
Zooming out a bit, the Marty Supreme losses at large represent a rather fitting and poetic end to this particular story’s awards season campaign. Marty himself, as anyone who’s seen the film is aware, finds himself sprinting from one bittersweet come-up to another throughout Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein’s story.
The ending proves especially bittersweet, as we find Marty, whose goal to get into the World Championship has failed, seemingly pausing to take stock of his life—where it’s going, where it’s been—for the very first time. Marty dreamed big, bigger than most even, and maybe that’s the real win.
Now, for those who might try to connect Chalamet’s own loss at Sunday’s Oscars ceremony to some innocuous remarks he made about ballet and opera, not so fast. Voting closed on March 5, while the remarks in question didn’t really start catching fire on social media until a day or two later.