With Anne Thompson and Eric Kohn

This Academy Awards season, IndieWire is keeping with tradition in presenting our annual Awards Spotlight series, which kicks off this month. The video series is presented by Amazon Studios.

IndieWire Editor-at-Large and awards analyst Anne Thompson and Executive Editor Eric Kohn spoke with a dynamic range of the year’s best talent to discuss their work on the top film contenders of 2021.

From Academy Award winners Guillermo del Toro, Jared Leto, and Kenneth Branagh (all back in the hunt with brand-new films) to perennial favorites like Penelope Cruz and Jessica Chastain and rising stars like Rebecca Hall and Alana Haim, IndieWire will continue to unveil exclusive interviews with awards contenders as Oscar voting gets underway.

The full list of IndieWire Winter Awards Spotlight participants is as follows.

Jennifer Hudson
Kristen Stewart and Pablo Larrain
Guillermo del Toro
Kenneth Branagh
Jessica Chastain
Jared Leto
Hans Zimmer
Alana Haim
Phil Lord and Chris Miller
Penelope Cruz
Javier Bardem
Peter Dinklage
Ariana DeBose
Lin-Manuel Miranda and Andrew Garfield
Daniel Craig
Amy Schumer
Mahershala Ali

And more to come.