What The Heck Is Nyad? What You Need To Know About This Year's Most Surprising Oscar Nominee

Like clockwork, every January brings a cavalcade of Oscar nominee snubs and surprises, but Academy voting trends typically don't stop there. Sometimes predictable, usually disappointing, and — every so often — downright confounding, there's always one nomination wrinkle that everyone's favorite awards show throws into the mix. Let's call it, "Movie that most normies have never even heard of." We use "normie" affectionately, of course, referring to general audiences with nine-to-five jobs who don't spend every waking moment on the internet (and, thus, are infinitely more "normal" and well-adjusted than us poor souls are). 

So after today's high-profile Oscars announcement, what stands out as the 2024 version of this annual and bizarrely fascinating event?

Folks, allow me to introduce you to a little movie called "Nyad," a biopic directed by the husband-and-wife directing duo of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin ("Free Solo") and based on the memoir written by long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad. The film had an unexpectedly strong showing in terms of nominations, doing what many supposed favorites could not (justice for "May December"!) and garnering a Best Supporting Actress slot for Jodie Foster and a Best Actress nod for Annette Bening. But if it seems like very few people would recognize the title of this movie if you randomly stopped and asked them on the street, there's a good reason for that. Despite debuting on the festival circuit to largely positive reviews, its distribution by Netflix ensured maybe a week or two of buzz. (According to the streamer's publicly-available metrics, it landed in the Global Top 10 Films for two whole weeks before disappearing into the ether.)

And, strangely enough, that's not even considering the mini firestorm of controversy "Nyad" was ensnared in, either.

More than any other kind of film, there is nothing the Academy voting body loves more than an inspirational biopic about overcoming long odds. On the surface (pardon the water-based pun), "Nyad" seems to fit the bill ... which goes a long way towards explaining why voters gravitated towards both Annette Bening's and Jodie Foster's strong performances as Diana Nyad and her close friend, swim coach, and lover Bonnie Stoll, respectively. The film covers Nyad's arduous mission to swim the 110 miles between Cuba to Florida without the benefit of protection from dangerous sharks and at the advanced age (as far as professional athletes go, at least) of 64. But beneath its seemingly calm waters, "Nyad" has plenty worth digging into.

As we've broken down for you at /Film previously, the film follows a real-life figure who has stirred up more than her fair share of controversy over the course of her long and rather complicated career. Viewers who flip on Netflix to check out "Nyad" for the first time in the upcoming days and weeks can look forward to experiencing a rather well-made, gripping, and emotional story — but one that doesn't fully address the lightning rod at its center. Would viewership and awareness have increased if the biopic included every sordid detail of Nyad's alleged arrogant behavior, suspicions of cheating and exaggerating her own achievements, and other questionable concerns? Probably not, in all honesty, but it does open up the conversation into the kinds of movies and subject matter that manage to break through to public consciousness. "Barbenheimer," this certainly was not.

In any case, "Nyad" has successfully thrust itself into the thick of the Oscars race. Whether it sinks or swims, ultimately, remains to be seen.