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As the Oscars 2026 are around the corner, here is a list of my most and least favourites, and why:

But first, we need to sympathise with the Academy members who have to compare and choose among a black zombie story, a Nordic drama, an action packed driver story, a science fiction conspiracy madhouse, and so on. It is very hard to choose when most of the films have something new to bring to the table and it is done with mastery. But before I go to the films of this year, it is worth reflecting on something we rarely discuss when we talk about cinema: its economic value as an art form. I am raising an issue on the topic of the net worth of films. Wandering around Monastiraki in Athens, or any other city centre for that matter, you can buy the masterpieces of modern cinema for one or two euros on DVD. Something that we overlook when we consider films as movies that are expendable. But this is not true. Film is a complete art form, not only pop movies consumed with popcorn and nachos with yellow sauce. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a significant achievement and you can have it at your home for the price of an apple, or a coffee. However, you cannot do that with another significant form of recognised art, like a painting or a sculpture. Why? Because of the notion of scarcity.

A visit to the Brooklyn Museum reminded me of this, and in particular the Doors installation by Christian Marclay. The Doors is a collage of pieces from many films, edited together in a seamless hourly show of a film, with brilliant craftsmanship. This is the second installation of this type from the same artist, following The Clock.

The Clock is one of the most important artworks of the twenty first century, yet most people have never heard of it. It is a twenty four hour film montage consisting of thousands of clips from movie history. Every single clip features a clock, a watch, or a mention of time, and the film is synchronized to the actual local time of the room where it is being shown. If a character in the movie looks at their watch and says it is two fifteen pm, it is exactly two fifteen pm in the real world. It is a relentless and hypnotic masterpiece that turns the history of cinema into a functional timepiece.

There is a catch to this masterpiece. Unlike the example of 2001: A Space Odyssey above, you cannot buy The Clock on Amazon or stream it on Netflix. You simply cannot even find it on DVD or in any other form anywhere. To see it you must travel to a major museum like the MoMA in New York or the Tate in London and wait in a physical line. It exists in only six editions worldwide, sold to elite institutions for roughly half a million dollars each. This creates a strange and arguably unfair situation when we compare it to the greatest films ever made. Consider Citizen Kane by Orson Welles, which is widely cited as the best film in history. Today you can buy a digital copy of Citizen Kane for three dollars. You can own the object for the price of a coffee. Because the film industry is built on mass distribution and volume, the greatest masterpieces of directors like Welles or Kubrick are treated as cheap commodities available to everyone.

This brings us to a fascinating question of net worth. If we look at the unit price of the art itself, Christian Marclay is arguably worth more than Orson Welles. Marclay sold six copies of his work and likely walked away with millions of dollars. Orson Welles, despite his genius, died relatively broke because he signed away his rights to a studio system that claimed his film made no profit. Marclay treated his film like a rare diamond, while the work of Welles was treated like a newspaper. In other words, Marclay turned the accessible history of cinema into an inaccessible luxury object for museums. Marclay defends this exclusivity by focusing on the physical presence of the viewer in the museum.

Imagine an alternative history where the masters of cinema followed this gallery model. If Stanley Kubrick had decided that 2001: A Space Odyssey would only ever be shown in five museums and never sold to the public, he would have likely died a much wealthier man. But we have to ask what the cost would be to the world.

Finally, to close the paragraph on net worth, there is a deep irony here. The Clock is built entirely from cheap cinema. Marclay harvested his clips from the very DVDs and files that sell for a few dollars. He took the accessible history of the masses and turned it into an inaccessible luxury for the museum crowd. Ultimately we face a choice between two models of success. The Welles model offers immortality through mass distribution where the work is worth very little money but has infinite human impact. The Marclay model offers financial security and prestige through artificial scarcity where the work is worth millions but remains a ghost to the general public. While it may seem unfair that a video installation can out earn a cinematic masterpiece, perhaps the cheapness of great films is actually their greatest gift to us. It ensures that art belongs to the people instead of just the institutions. Film is a democratic medium and film installations are the elite medium. If Citizen Kane had been locked up in a museum, generations of filmmakers would never have encountered it. The history of cinema would have been poorer. The world would have been a lesser place.

Back to the Oscar night, if anyone is still here. I have three favourites to win, Sentimental Value, Marty Supreme and Hamnet. Bugonia is fourth in my mind. You don’t see the favourite to win in my top three (One Battle After Another) because even though it is a complete textbook success of a film, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, it doesn’t move the medium forward, and most importantly it moved me less than my three nominations. As for the remaining films, they are all good, but nothing special (except Sinners, that is indeed a great new idea). To close this article, I will reveal the topic of my next article: Which female character of a film is my ideal woman and how the director achieves this phenomenal character build up.