Here's what you didn't see in some of the best picture Oscar contenders

Directors, and their editors, indispensable beryllium brutal successful their last cuts. Scenes that were conceived, written and often adjacent already changeable sometimes indispensable beryllium sliced and diced retired — for a assortment of reasons: to support the hostility cranked up, to make a small mystery, to support down the moving time.

Well, sometimes that’s an issue. “We didn’t chopped a azygous country from the movie that ended up connected the cutting-room floor,” writes “The Brutalist” shaper Brian Young. “That’s wherefore the movie is 3.5 hours long. This is besides 1 of the secrets to making the movie for arsenic overmuch arsenic we did. Nothing was wasted!”

But successful most films, not everything tin fit, and assembling the pieces is simply a large portion of cinematic craft. “One of cinema’s main challenges is the hunt for essence,” Walter Salles, manager of aggregate Oscar nominee “I’m Still Here,” writes successful an email. “In that pursuit, large scenes that are not indispensable essential beryllium near behind.”

What snippets of this year’s Academy Award champion representation contenders ne'er made it to the last cut? We spoke with 5 filmmakers down immoderate of this season’s nominees to find retired what we’re missing — and wherefore it had to go.

(Uncredited / Associated Press)

‘Anora’

Sean Baker, director

Setup: Nearly a half-hour of Ani (Mikey Madison) wandering astir the portion club, fundamentally unscripted (but guided by Baker via earpiece) to get “documentary-style” inheritance of her working.

Missing moment: “Mikey was brilliant, due to the fact that she had done truthful overmuch research, spending clip astatine that nine and shadowing dancers, that she understood what each of her interactions would be,” Baker says. “We had 30 minutes of golden to winnow down to 3 minutes. I’m hoping to person much connected the Criterion disc to amusement however superb she was. But it hurts, particularly erstwhile I cognize I person each that gold.”

‘Conclave’

Tessa Ross, producer

Setup: An opening changeable of the flat artifact wherever Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) lives. The camera peers into his flat arsenic helium is awoken by an urgent telephone astir the pope’s death.

Missing moment: “During the editing process, we decided that the film’s pulse should beryllium raised from the start,” says Ross, noting that the existent opening of the movie present is simply a choky changeable of Lawrence’s backmost arsenic helium strides to the pope’s deathbed. The thought was “to instantly make a feeling of mystique, intrigue and urgency: We don’t person the details, but we consciousness the unit is on. It felt important, too, to state that this would beryllium a movie that stays highly adjacent to Lawrence: The movie keeps its characters cloistered, with lone fleeting glimpses of the extracurricular world.”

(Alile Onawale/Sony Pictures Classics)

‘I’m Still Here’

Walter Salles, director

Setup: “I’m Still Here” primitively opened connected an unfastened oversea astatine dawn arsenic a subject chopper arrives. Black bags are tossed from the craft and onshore successful the water. The chopper flies implicit Leblon Beach and a pistillate is seen bobbing successful the sea.

Missing moment: “The country enactment unneurotic by our superb exertion Affonso Gonçalves carried a uncommon cinematic power,” writes Salles. “But what often seems indispensable connected insubstantial tin go redundant arsenic a movie takes shape. … The opening credits country answered a question that should person remained unresolved [because] … successful existent life, it remains unanswered to this day: What happened to the governmental dissidents who disappeared during Brazil’s subject dictatorship?”

‘Nickel Boys’

RaMell Ross, director

Setup: As a child, Elwood (Ethan Cole Sharp) probes a mousetrap with a stick, causing it to drawback closed arsenic the camera turns to uncover a rodent nether the bed.

Missing moment: “We had an extended Elwood childhood,” Ross says. “The extremity was to bring you into his position and yet you recognize however helium came to recognize himself arsenic Black, truthful we started with guiltless gestures. That 1 we loved due to the fact that it spoke to his transportation to different beingness forms, and his tendency not to person a rodent successful a trap. But we had excessively overmuch imagery, and you could suffer that representation without hurting the film.”

A country from “Wicked” betwixt Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande).

‘Wicked’

Jon M. Chu, director

Setup: Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) are astatine likelihood due to the fact that erstwhile Elphaba enactment everyone to slumber with poppies and near with Fiyero, she didn’t instrumentality Glinda. Guilty astir that choice, Elphaba apologizes and promises ne'er to permission her person down again.

Missing moment: “It was a beauteous scene,” Chu says. “The crushed we chopped it is successful the adjacent scene, they’re astatine the bid presumption earlier Elphaba goes to Emerald City. Elphaba is the lone 1 invited — and she invites Glinda to spell astatine the past minute. When you person ‘The Promise’ country close earlier that, if you judge Elphaba is simply a idiosyncratic of her word, you cognize she’s going to invitation Glinda to the Emerald City. She’s said she wouldn’t permission her down again. So it took the hostility retired of that adjacent [train] scene. [Without it], you don’t cognize wherever their relationship stands due to the fact that they haven’t talked astir it yet. It made that infinitesimal much saccharine and surprising, and didn’t let the assemblage to beryllium excessively acold up of us.”