Oscars: Sandra Hüller Breaks Through With Best Actress Nomination

The Oscars, it seems, agree with The Hollywood Reporter: Sandra Hüller is a star.

When THR put the German actress on its cover for its Toronto Film Festival issue, it was under the headline “Actress of the Year?” It was an acknowledgment that Hüller had given two of the most outstanding performances in film in 2023: as a novelist accused of murder in Justine Triet’s mystery thriller Anatomy of a Fall and as a domestic Nazi in Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest.

On Tuesday, Hüller scored a nomination for the 2024 Oscars in the best actress category for Anatomy of a Fall. Both Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest were also nominated in the best picture and best director categories.

In Anatomy, Hüller plays Sandra Voyter, a successful German novelist living in the French Alps who may or may not have murdered her less-successful French writer husband Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis). Her performance — “sensational” was THR‘s critical assessment — is a masterclass in ambiguity, with audiences uncertain of Sandra’s guilt or innocence, until the final frame and beyond.

Hüller won the best actress honor at last year’s European Film Awards for Anatomy of a Fall and was nominated in the best actress categories in both the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs.

Her Oscar nom makes her the first German actress to be nominated for an Academy Award in the best actress category since Luise Rainer, who won back-to-back best actress Oscars in 1936 and 1937. She’s only the third German actress ever to be nominated, alongside Rainer and Marlene Dietrich.