This year’s Academy Award contenders take audiences on journeys across space and time, from the Colosseum of ancient Rome to the drug dens of mid-century Mexico City, from the cramped confines of a network TV studio to the infinite sandscapes of a far-off planet. Making these Oscar hopefuls took a variety of factors, including peerless production design, a range of foreign tax incentives, the work of countless location scouts and a bit of moviemaking sleight of hand to transform even familiar places into entirely unexpected destinations.
Here’s where filming took place for some of Variety’s favorite movies heating up this award season:
Conclave
Perhaps a papal dispensation might’ve allowed Edward Berger’s Vatican drama to shoot in the Sistine Chapel, but the production team opted for a no-less-formidable Rome institution, Cinecittà Studios, to build a stunning replica. The chapel and the palatial Casa Santa Marta were built on stage 15 — one of the studio’s largest and most versatile facilities — with set construction performed by a team of 50 skilled artisans. It took them all of 10 weeks to recreate Michelangelo’s piece de resistance (while the original took the famous Renaissance artist four full years to paint).
The Outrun
Much of Nora Fingscheidt’s Saoirse Ronan-starring recovery drama, based on the bestselling memoir by local author Amy Liptrot, was filmed on location on Scotland’s Orkney Islands (though the Outrun itself — a wild, windswept stretch of coastland — sits on a private farm). Though there are no locally based production companies on Orkney, equipment rental, permits, location sourcing and other logistics can be facilitated through the publicly funded Orkney Marketing, which acts as a de facto film office for the archipelago (pop. 22,000).
The Substance
Veteran Paris-based company Voulez-vous Production Services handled the 108-day shoot for Coralie Fargeat’s body horror, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, which was filmed in the Paris region and on location on the Côte d’Azur. Working with a mostly French crew — and the country’s 40% tax rebate — the production traveled across the Alpes-Maritimes to find locations that evoke Hollywood and California. The gambit paid off: French audiences at the film’s Cannes premiere were reportedly shocked to learn it was filmed in their backyard.
Gladiator II
Ridley Scott and company returned to the island of Malta for the sequel to 2000’s best picture winner, where the spectacular, 17th-century Fort Ricasoli — a fully functioning backlot managed by the country’s film commission, Screen Malta — was used to recreate ancient Rome. Crews also built an amphitheater on the fort’s 70,000 square meter backlot, while the water tanks at Malta Film Studios — also managed by Screen Malta, which can assist with the country’s 40% cash rebate — were used for the movie’s epic naval battles.
Maria
Though Pablo Larraín’s biopic of the American-born, Greek opera diva Maria Callas had several shooting days in Greece (where she spent her formative years) and Paris (where she eventually died), most of the Angelina Jolie-starring film was shot in Budapest. Local production services company Pioneer Stillking Films utilized locations such as the Hungarian State Opera House and the historic Express Building, which doubled for Callas’ grand apartment in Paris. (The production, however, tacked on a single shooting day in Milan to give La Scala a star turn.)
“Dune 2” shot its desert scenes in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
Everett Collection
Dune 2
Dennis Villeneuve’s sci-fi sequel set up shop in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan to shoot its dramatic desert scenes, with production services, key crew and equipment provided by Budapest-based Mid Atlantic Films — which, thanks to a provision in the Hungarian tax incentive, were able to benefit from that country’s 30% rebate. Local crew also pitched in to build massive backlots in the middle of the desert, with support provided by Dubai-based Epic Films and Jordan’s Zaman Project Management.
Blitz
While locations across the British capital — including underground Tube stations and Waterloo’s iconic Roupell Street — hosted Steve McQueen’s ambitious WWII drama, much of Blitz-era London (such as the West End nightclub Café de Paris) was recreated at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, utilizing four soundstages and the studio backlot. Key sequences also shot in Hull, whose Paragon Station doubled as London’s Paddington, while a major action set piece was filmed at the Historic Dockyard Chatham, a former naval facility.
A Real Pain
Jesse Eisenberg’s road movie about two cousins taking a “Holocaust tour” across Poland got assistance from a range of local bodies and commissions — including the Polish Film Institute and the Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission, which both co-financed the project — along with Poland’s 30% cash rebate. Key scenes were shot with the help of the Lublin Film Fund in that eastern city, where Oscar-winning producer Ewa Puszczyńska also worked closely with local officials to secure rare permission to film at the Majdanek concentration camp.
Nosferatu
Robert Eggers’ reimagining of the 1922 silent German horror classic was shot at a variety of locations around the Czech Republic with the help of Prague-based Stillking Films — and the country’s cash rebate, which will rise to 25% in January — utilizing locations including the 13th-century Rožmitál Castle in Bohemia and Prague’s striking Invalidovna complex, a one-time home for war veterans. Filming also took place at Prague’s legendary Barrandov Studios, making use of three stages and a backlot to build the film’s elaborate sets.
Queer
Though most of Luca Guadagnino’s buzzy adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ confessional novel is set in Mexico City (and was largely filmed at Rome’s Cinecittà), the production used a week of shooting in Sicily to recreate 1940s Latin America, including the Palermo botanical garden — which doubled as a Mexican forest — and the city’s Piazza Magione, where a bustling market was built. Though equipment was brought in from Rome, the Sicilia Film Commission helped the production tap into regional funds and access locations like the hard-to-reach nature reserve along the Belice River that stood in for Panama.
Sicily doubled for 1940s Latin America in Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.”
Courtesy of A24
Emilia Pérez
French director Jacques Audiard had planned to film his musical crime comedy — about a Mexican cartel leader who undergoes a sex change to escape the law — in Mexico, but in the end he settled on Bry-Sur-Marne Studios outside Paris to shoot France’s submission for the international feature film Oscar. Audiard’s production team constructed an authentic Mexican backdrop at the studio, which recently benefited from a dramatic expansion as part of the France 2030 modernization plan and hosts roughly half of all French productions.
September 5
To capture the drama as ABC’s sports crew narrated the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the production team of Tim Fehlbaum’s Oscar hopeful built an almost perfect replica of the network’s control room at Munich’s Bavaria Studios, utilizing a 11,300-square-foot soundstage. Set designer Julian R. Wagner and his team sourced original equipment from museums and private collectors across Europe. The monitors were even wired and operated by the studio’s full-service post house, Panoptimo, allowing the actors to interact with archival footage in real time.
The Brutalist
Brady Corbet’s epic tells the story of a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who journeys from Budapest to America after WWII, but the production — co-produced by Budapest-based Proton Cinema — didn’t travel nearly as far. Production designer Judy Becker and her team used the streets of the Hungarian capital to recreate mid-century American suburbia, getting an assist from Hungary’s National Film Institute, which offered support in the form of a 30% tax incentive, as well as the lab that processed all 26 reels of Corbet’s 70mm film stock.
