Timothée Chalamet and ‘Marty Supreme’ net 9 Oscar nominations for Jewish sports fable

By ANDREW LAPIN

(JTA) — It was a “Supreme” Oscar-nominations morning for Timothée Chalamet and the heavily Jewish period sports comedy he stars in.

Timothée Chalamet in “Marty Supreme” (Courtesy of A24)

“Marty Supreme” picked up nine Academy Award nominations Thursday, including best picture and best actor for the red-hot Chalamet, the 30-year-old thespian who is seen as likely to nab his first Oscar for the role.

The film also earned nods for best director for Josh Safdie; original screenplay for Safdie and Ronald Bronstein; cinematography; editing; production design; and costumes.

“Marty Supreme” was also nominated in the brand-new category of best casting, acknowledging a supporting cast stacked with ringers, many of them Jewish — including Odessa A’zion, Gwyneth Paltrow, Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard and Isaac Mizrahi.

Elsewhere in the nominees, “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a film about the death of a Palestinian child during the Israel-Gaza war told from the perspective of the Palestinian Red Crescent, was nominated for best international feature.

The film, submitted by Tunisia and co-produced by upstart pro-Palestinian distributor Watermelon Pictures, won a groundswell of support from the pro-Palestinian filmmaking community during the awards circuit. Jonathan Glazer, the British Jewish filmmaker behind the acclaimed Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” whose Oscars speech last year took aim at Israel’s conduct in Gaza, co-produced the film.

In addition, Jewish super-producer and director Steven Spielberg was nominated as a producer for best picture nominee “Hamnet,” which picked up eight nominations total.

A critical and box-office hit for distributor A24, “Marty Supreme” follows an aspiring ping-pong athlete in the postwar Lower East Side as he prepares to sacrifice everything for the chance to play in the world championships in Japan.

It is loosely based on the story of Marty Reisman, a real-life Jewish ping-pong champion and street hustler, though much of the rollicking tale — which includes detours into Auschwitz and the Pyramids of Giza — is fictional. Marty’s journey also puts his own American Jewish identity under the microscope as he tangles with an antisemitic businessman and a dog named Moses.

The film is the most evident Jewish rooting interest among the Oscar front-runners this year, especially since beloved Jewish actor Adam Sandler — who memorably starred in Safdie’s previous film “Uncut Gems” — missed out on a supporting actor nomination for his work in “Jay Kelly.”

“Blue Moon,” a biopic of Jewish songwriter Lorenz Hart, picked up two nominations: best actor for Ethan Hawke and best original screenplay. Other films with prominent Jewish angles, including the World War II drama “Nuremberg,” came up empty-handed.

By contrast, last year’s nominations brought a slew of Jewish-interest selections including “The Brutalist,” “A Real Pain” and “A Complete Unknown,” the Bob Dylan biopic that also scored a nomination for Chalamet. Several of those films went on to win in major categories.

A few minor Jewish connections can be found in the year’s second-most-nominated film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s political-rebel action drama “One Battle After Another” (which picked up 13 nominations, second only to “Sinners” with 16).

The British Jewish composer and Radiohead band member Jonny Greenwood, who has faced backlash from some fans over his collaborations with Israeli musicians, was nominated for best score for the film. Israeli-American actress and musician Alana Haim, a frequent Anderson collaborator, also has a small role, and one of the movie’s storylines involves a secret cabal of white supremacists who restrict membership to the “Gentile-born.”

The Brazilian espionage drama “The Secret Agent,” nominated for four Oscars including best picture and best international feature, also notably features a cameo from recently deceased German actor Udo Kier. In one of his final roles, Kier plays a German Jewish refugee hiding out in Brazil whom the state’s fascist-friendly police force mistakenly believe is a Nazi.

The Safdies cast a longer shadow over the morning’s nominations. “The Smashing Machine,” a different sports biopic directed by Benny Safdie — Josh’s brother, his collaborator on “Uncut Gems” and other films — was nominated for best makeup. And “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” directed by Jewish filmmaker Mary Bronstein and produced by her husband Ronald — a Safdie collaborator nominated this year for co-writing “Marty Supreme” — picked up a best actress nomination for star Rose Byrne.

Diane Warren, the Jewish songwriter and erstwhile Oscar nominee, was once again nominated — for the 17th time — in the category of best original song. This time, Warren’s nomination came from writing a song for “Diane Warren: Relentless,” a documentary about herself.