Oscars 2019: 10 Great Films That Didn't Get A Single Nomination (And What They Deserved)
7. Leave No Trace
What It Deserved: Director, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay
It's easy to see why Leave No Trace wasn't really a player in the Oscar race. It's a film that lives up to its title: it quietly sneaks up on you, and just as quietly it's gone. There's nothing particularly showy about it, so it wasn't going to make the grade over the flashier fare the Oscars like, but that is also its greatest strength.
Debra Granik, making her long-awaited return to feature films after 2010's Winter's Bone, shows remarkable restraint in her direction here - a quality all-too-often overlooked - when it could so easily have been sensationalised. That counts for Granik and Anne Rosellini's screenplay too, which adapts My Abandonment by Peter Rock. In both cases there's a more low-key approach, but that's important because it allows the film to really take a hold of you, and for its powerful messages to sink in. It's substance over style, which doesn't win awards, but does make for films with a lasting impact.
Then there's newcomer Thomasin McKenzie, a New Zealand teenager who is surely destined for bigger things. McKenzie is a remarkable find, portraying an incredible mix of strength and vulnerability, of assuredness, confusion, and sadness. She steals the show without really being given a show-stealing moment, but simply by just consistently being brilliant throughout. Ben Foster is stellar too, but there's a strong Best Actor line-up with some more startling omissions, and McKenzie is one who leaves the biggest mark here.