Dads Get Messy at This Year’s Oscars, with Bilge Ebiri

From Jay Kelly to Sentimental Value to One Battle After Another, Oscar season 2025 is overflowing with dads—absent ones, ambitious ones, ones who chose career over family and are now reckoning with the cost. We dig into how this year's best films moved beyond the “scary dad" trope to give us fathers who are flawed, human, and genuinely complicated, and what that shift says about how the world is thinking about fatherhood right now. Credits Host: Kevin Maguire Managing Producer: Elizabeth Van Brocklin Sound Editor: Sam Williams Theme Music: Sohn More of Bilge’s work: Bilge’s writing on Vulture Bilge’s dad’s film notebooks Review of Train Dreams Review of Jay Kelly Review of Hamnet Review of One Battle After Another Bilge’s Dad Watchlist The Champ The Shining Bigger Than Life Train Dreams Jay Kelly One Battle After Another Walking with Dinosaurs Other show references: Subscribe to TNF newsletter Kevin’s essay on Train Dreams Timestamps 00:00 Hello 00:31 Becoming Nemo’s Dad 03:30 Let’s talk movies! 05:00 Film diaries c. 1940s 06:10 Apocalypse Now 07:20 Present dad award 10:43 Core memory of The Shining 15:00 Masculinity crisis 16:48 [SPOILERS] Train Dreams 19:15 Providing vs. protecting 19:58 [SPOILERS] Hamnet 20:20 [SPOILERS] Sentimental Value 21:04 [SPOILERS] Jay Kelly 23:50 [SPOILERS] More Train Dreams 27:24 [SPOILERS] Leo is best film dad 29:10 The Shining easter egg 31:21 Letting go in the teen years 33:00 Watching movies with your kids 36:43 The outcast dinosaur Get full access to The New Fatherhood at www.thenewfatherhood.org/subscribe