The 2025 awards season has seen Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist as a top contender, alongside Anora, Emilia Pérez, Conclave and many more. The 3-hour-and-35-minute film on a Holocaust survivor’s experience immigrating to America has been lauded for its unique storytelling and brilliant performance.
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Corbet is heavily adorned with nomination after nomination for the film, and in January bagged his first major award, Best Director at the Golden Globes. He was up against Emilia Pérez’s Jacques Audiard, Anora’s Sean Baker, Conclave’s Edward Berger, The Substance’s Coralie Fargeat, and All We Imagine as Light’s Payal Kapadia.
Now, in an interview with the Hindustan Times, Corbet praised his fellow nominee Kapadia for her directorial role in her film about two Kerala nurses working in Mumbai. He said, “Payal is an extraordinary filmmaker. My pal Chaitanya Tamhane (Court, 2015) is also an extraordinary director. I'm very, very supportive of more films from India being internationally recognised. We have a lot of conversations about gender parity at festivals every year. But how frequently is a nation that produces as much cinema as yours is under-represented at these festivals is something I find baffling and appalling."
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“I'm extremely excited for Payal's success. It's extremely deserved. I hope it means a new wave for Indian cinema, especially from young female filmmakers like herself,” he continued.
Speaking about the process of making a film like The Brutalist, Corbet’s wife and co-writer Mona Fastvold explained, “It was definitely a cathartic experience. We exercised some demons during the process. It's a similar process to erecting a building, just dealing with hundreds of people, gathering a crew, working on a specific, unique vision. It definitely has a lot of similarities.”
