Oscars: Who should win - and who will?

Cillian Murphy looks unbeatable for the Best Actor gong. But who else should win at the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday night? And who will win?

Irish Times chief film correspondent Donald Clarke says that it’s shaping up to be Oppenheimer’s year at the Oscars. But what about Barbie? And could Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, produced by Dublin-based Element Pictures, also do well?

This time last year Irish hopes were high with The Banshees of Inisherin getting nine nominations – on the night it lost out in all its categories. Could the same happen to Poor Things with its 11 nods?

[ Oscars 2024: Donald Clarke's on who should win this year's Academy Awards – and who will ]

The organisers will be nervous about any break in the relative silence about the Gaza conflict that has persisted throughout awards season. It might, says Clarke, just be time for an award winner to break the silence – once the statuette is safely in their hands.