Oscar-winner Jessie Buckley: back grassroots talent over award campaigns

By Grace Kim

Jessie Buckley, who won the Academy Award for best actress earlier this year, has questioned whether the film industry gives too much weight to Oscar campaigns — and too little to emerging talent.

Speaking at the BFI and Chanel film-maker awards in London on 14 October, Buckley said the industry should nurture film-makers at grassroots level "rather than giving so much weight to an Oscar campaign", according to the Guardian's report.

Her comments came as a direct answer to John Malkovich. The actor recently argued that Oscar campaigns were now the only way to get audiences into cinemas, in remarks reported by Variety.

So we have a genuine disagreement between two award-calibre actors. Malkovich says campaigning is the mechanism that fills seats. Buckley says that mechanism has swallowed the budget and attention that younger film-makers need.

What does this change for new talent?

On its own, nothing structural — this was a speech, not a policy. But the venue matters. The BFI and Chanel film-maker awards exist precisely to fund and spotlight emerging directors, so Buckley was speaking to a room full of the people her argument defends.

When an Oscar winner uses that platform to redirect attention from the awards ladder to grassroots support, it puts pressure on studios and funders who decide where money flows during awards season — the monthslong push of screenings, ads and outreach that precedes the Academy ceremony.

Buckley also addressed the importance of protest in her remarks, the Guardian reported, broadening the speech beyond industry economics.

The timing sharpens the point. Her own Oscar win this year is the kind of success the campaign system claims to produce. That she is questioning that system from inside it, days into a new awards conversation, gives the argument weight it wouldn't carry from a fringe panel.

Whether festivals, funders and distributors respond with actual money for early-career film-makers, rather than applause, is the test her speech now sets.