When the Ralph Fiennes-led papal thriller “Conclave” secured the highest honor at the 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards last weekend, it seemed like a strong indicator that it would prevail in the best picture category at the Academy Awards on Sunday night. After all, the last three winners of SAG’s top prize — “Oppenheimer,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “CODA” — all won the best picture statuette at the Oscars.

But it isn’t exactly that clear cut.

Those past three films had essentially swept their awards season, and aside from the SAG Awards, “Conclave” has won only one other best picture title, at the BAFTAs in February.

“Anora,” the comedy-drama about a stripper (played by Mikey Madison) whose modern fairy-tale romance implodes, had several of the other early big wins this season, including two major industry prizes — from the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America — that almost always signal a best-picture Oscar up ahead.

Also, Edward Berger, the director of “Conclave,” was not nominated for a best directing Oscar. Only six films in the history of the Oscars have won best picture without a best directing nomination, most recently “CODA” in 2022.

Just a few weeks ago, “Emilia Pérez” was on top of the world. The Spanish-language musical out of France had earned 13 Oscar nominations, the most of any film this year (and nearly the most ever), and its lead, Karla Sofía Gascón, made history as the first openly transgender actress to be nominated for an Academy Award, in the best actress category no less.

And at the Golden Globes in January, out of its 10 nominations, it won four awards: best non-English-language motion picture; best musical or comedy motion picture; best original song; and Zoe Saldaña won for best supporting actress. “Emilia Pérez” also won two coveted honors at the Cannes Film Festival last year, including the jury prize.

But the film’s prospects have quickly eroded. In late January, the journalist Sarah Hagi resurfaced a series of derogatory comments that Gascón had posted years ago on Twitter, now known as X. In them, she denigrated Muslims, called George Floyd a “drug-addicted con artist,” and even criticized the diverse winners of the 2021 Oscar telecast, writing: “I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8-M.”

Netflix — the distributor of “Emilia Pérez” that was hoping that the film would finally earn the streamer a best picture Oscar — swiftly tried to mitigate the damage. “I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” Gascón, 52, said in an apology provided by Netflix.

But Gascón didn’t drop it after that, instead opting to keep defending herself on her Instagram, saying that some of her opinions had been misconstrued and that some posts had been doctored.

Since then, Netflix has distanced itself from Gascón, instead making Saldaña, who is up for supporting-actress Oscar, the face of the film.

While that might seem like enough drama to derail the film’s Oscar dream, backlash against the film — about a transgender Mexican cartel boss who seeks gender-affirming care to transition physically into a woman — had already been brewing on several fronts.

The film was received negatively by many viewers in Mexico, who thought that the film’s French director, Jacques Audiard, made light of or even glamorized the country’s drug-related violence. And despite being set in Mexico, “Emilia Pérez” was filmed almost entirely on soundstages in France.

In a statement issued in November, GLAAD, one of the most powerful L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organizations, said “Emilia Pérez” was “a profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” and “a step backward for trans representation.”

Gascón has skipped recent awards ceremonies, including Critics Choice, Directors Guild and Producers Guild. But she is expected to attend the Oscars, though it’s unclear if she will walk the red carpet or sit with the cast and crew of the film.

When Demi Moore accepted her Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy in January — for her role as Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading star who goes to gruesome lengths to stay relevant in the body horror film “The Substance” — she made a moving statement about her Hollywood trajectory.

“I had a woman say to me, just know, you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick,” she said. “And so today I celebrate this as a marker of my wholeness and of the love that is driving me.”

The win solidified the star’s comeback and the message helped the actress, who has more name recognition among American audiences than many nominees, stand out in an exceedingly competitive awards season for best actress nominees.

At the Oscars, Moore, 62, is up against Mikey Madison, 25, the star of “Anora,” who bested Moore at the BAFTAs in mid-February; Fernanda Torres, of “I’m Still Here,” who won the best actress in a drama Golden Globe; Cynthia Erivo, the “Wicked” star who made viral magic with her co-star Ariana Grande on their press tour; and Gascón from “Emilia Pérez.”

Also working in Moore’s favor: At the Screen Actors Guild Awards last weekend, she triumphed over Madison, Erivo and Gascón (Torres was not nominated).

Normally American studios scramble to snap up buzzy films and documentaries, particular those that have had successful festival runs, in the hopes of boosting their Oscar-nomination totals. But so far, no American distributor will touch “No Other Land” even though it won the top documentary award and the audience award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024 and dozens of awards from critics, juries and audiences across the world since.

The movie, which our critic called “audacious and devastating,” is about the Israeli government’s efforts to demolish homes and expel families in the community of Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank, claiming the area is needed for a military training ground.

Its filmmaking team is made up of two Palestinians, Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, and two Israelis, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The movie documents the period between 2019 and 2023, and includes archival footage from Adra’s family, who are from Masafer Yatta.

Producers eventually opted to self-distribute the film, landing it in about two-dozen U.S. theaters with more underway thanks to a strong box office. Still, the filmmakers hope a U.S. distributor will help their film reach more viewers, potentially via a streamer like Netflix or Max.

“It’s clear that there are political reasons at play here that are affecting it,” Abraham told The New York Times in a February video interview he did alongside Adra, from Adra’s Masafer Yatta home. “I’m hoping that at a certain point the demand for the film will become so clear and indisputable that there will be a distributor with the kind of courage to take it on and show it to the audience.”

It’s certainly plausible that an Oscars win might just be that needed nudge.

Cynthia Erivo Could Clinch an EGOT

Cynthia Erivo is hoping to join an exclusive circle on Sunday night: the EGOT club, an acronym for those who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.

She is nominated in the best actress category for her turn as the green-hued heroine Elphaba in “Wicked,” the first of a two-part adaptation of the Broadway musical inspired by the story of the Wizard of Oz.

If Erivo wins, she would become not only the 22nd person with an EGOT earned in competitive categories (meaning none of the awards were honorary) but also the youngest person to ever achieve this status, at the age of 38. A few previous winners secured their EGOTs at age 39, including Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who did so last year with an Emmy win for a song they wrote for the Hulu comedy “Only Murders in the Building.”

Erivo won her Tony in 2016, for best actress in a musical for her role as Celie in “The Color Purple”; her Grammy in 2017 for the cast album for that musical; and her daytime Emmy in 2017 for a performance by the cast of “The Color Purple” on the “Today” show.

As wildfires devastated large swaths of Los Angeles in January, it seemed possible that the Oscars ceremony might need to be delayed. After all, the nominations were twice postponed because of the fires. And the annual Oscars luncheon, which was set to be held on Feb. 10, was canceled entirely; it had only been canceled once before — in 2021, because of the pandemic — since the event began in 1982.

But on Sunday night at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, the show will go on as scheduled, and it can be expected that the fires will be a focus of the ceremony.

In a letter sent to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in January, Bill Kramer, the Academy’s chief executive, and Janet Yang, its president, said: “We will honor Los Angeles as the city of dreams, showcasing its beauty and resilience, as well as its role as a beacon for filmmakers and creative visionaries for over a century.”

The letter from Kramer and Yang specified that this year’s ceremony would “acknowledge those who fought so bravely against the wildfires.”

The Oscars ceremony has never been outright canceled, but has been postponed a handful of times: first in 1938, because of flooding in Los Angeles; in 1968, after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; in 1981, after the shooting of President Ronald Reagan; and in 2021, when the ceremony was moved to April from February because of the Covid pandemic.

The Grammy Awards in early February tried to walk the line between being glitzy and somber, and doubled as a fund-raising appeal, an approach that may serve as a template of sorts for how the Oscars will handle the evening.