Canadian cinephile talk with awards-season nerve.
Contra Zoom Pod treats film culture as both a pleasure and a running argument. Its recent episodes move from Canadian Screen Award nominations to Oscar math, TIFF-connected titles, documentary shorts, and interviews with directors about form, memory, violence, and adaptation.
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Contra Zoom Pod is a film conversation show with a clear affection for Canadian cinema and a recurring fascination with awards machinery. It is not just a predictions feed. The show pays attention to why certain films appear in a field, why others miss expected categories, and how eligibility, release timing, craft branches, and critical momentum shape the story around a movie. Canadian Screen Award coverage gives it a regional focus that many broader film podcasts lack. Oscar season gives it structure. Recent episodes sort through nominations, draft possible winners, revisit Best Picture contenders, and mark each category with labels like frontrunner, dark horse, long shot, or simply happy to be there. The mood is conversational and alert. Dakota Arsenault often frames the awards episodes with clear rules and a sense of playful risk, then lets guests argue their way through the field. The guest bench matters. Thomas Stonem Judge brings recurring Oscar-draft energy and a critic's investment in the game, while Paolo Bautista connects the office-pool impulse to deeper attention to below-the-line work. The show can be funny about predictions without treating the films as disposable. It also knows when to slow down. Interview episodes with Alireza Khatami and Alison McAlpine shift from punditry into process, form, memory, trauma, translation, and experimental documentary. Those conversations make the feed feel larger than awards chatter. A discussion of The Things You Kill, for instance, becomes a way into doppelgangers, family, violence, agency, and comparison points like Fight Club. A segment on Perfectly A Strangeness opens into the unusual place of hybrid work inside the documentary-short race. Contra Zoom Pod is best for listeners who enjoy film talk that has lived-in references but does not harden into academic distance. It is warm, specific, and willing to be wrong in public. It treats cinema as art, industry, competition, and shared obsession all at once.
Made for: Best for film listeners who follow Oscar races, Canadian cinema, TIFF-connected titles, craft categories, and critic conversations. It also suits viewers who like interviews that connect a film's story to structure, memory, and performance.
What sets it apart: The show pairs granular awards forecasting with a sustained Canadian film focus, giving space to Canadian Screen Award fields alongside Oscar campaigns. Its interview episodes keep the feed from becoming only punditry, adding filmmaker-level talk about form, adaptation, trauma, and documentary experimentation.
Contra Zoom is a film based podcast going in depth about varying movie related subjects. Dakota Arsenault and guests go over both academic and the fun aspects of enjoying the film medium. Episodes feature lists, interviews and comparisons. Visit contrazoompod.com for more details!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Contra Zoom Pod makes awards races, festival discoveries and filmmaker choices legible through specific, curious conversation.
Contra Zoom Pod turns film culture into an ongoing conversation between close viewing and the machinery surrounding it. Dakota Arsenault leads forecasts that sort Oscar nominations by likelihood, then tests those calls with guests against casting choices, memorable supporting…
Even casting directors can make you rethink your Oscar ballot here.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear guide to the Canadian Screen nominations, strongest when curiosity matters more than consensus.
Contra Zoom uses the Canadian Screen Award nominations as a practical way into the current Canadian film conversation. Dakota Arsenault, Matthew Simpson, and Jeff Ballmer place the awards within the show's regular coverage, touch on rule changes, and move through films such as…
Khatami discusses doppelgangers, violence and why disorienting an audience can open a film up.
Alireza Khatami gives the doppelganger in The Things You Kill more than symbolic weight. The destructive double has agency of his own, a choice that keeps him from becoming a tidy product of imagination.
A warm Oscar wrap-up with a sharp eye for comic craft and In Memoriam feeling.
Contra Zoom Pod's Oscar wrap-up works best as a conversation about what makes an awards show feel alive once the spectacle gives way to the odd business of watching it in real time.
A brisk Oscar-odds discussion makes its strongest case through memorable supporting characters.
Oscar season gives Contra Zoom a tidy pressure test as Dakota Arsenault and first-time guest Alicia Brenner sort the chances for One Battle After Another, Sentimental Value, and Begonia across their nominations.
A Best Picture odds check that finds Oscar drama in casting, precursors, and the road to a ballot.
ContraZoom turns an early look at the Best Picture field into an Oscar-season odds check, sorting Sinners, Hamnet, and F1 through the familiar lanes of frontrunner, dark horse, long shot, and happy to be there.
Alison McAlpine connects donkeys, an observatory and a coincidental cloud shadow with the freedom of hybrid documentary.
Oscar-nominated documentary short Perfectly A Strangeness gives director Alison McAlpine room to consider the hazy border between nonfiction and experimentation.
Dry film talk with festival mileage.
Fast film talk beyond the obvious releases.
Cult cinema and comics, argued with feeling.
Jeff Ballmer interviews Alison McAlpine, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary short 'Perfectly a Strangeness'.
ContraZoom's Dakota Arsenault, Matthew Simpson, and Jeff Ballmer use the 2026 Canadian Screen Awards nominations to test a new Canadian-only acting rule and four spotlight categories.
Interview with director Alireza Khatami about his film The Things You Kill, a Turkish-language Canadian Oscar submission exploring doppelgangers, family, trauma, and violence.
Dakota Arsenault and Alex Southey discuss the 98th Academy Awards, including winners, losers, and highlights from the ceremony hosted by Conan O'Brien.
Host Dakota Arsenault and guest Thomas Stonem Judge discuss their predictions for the 2026 Academy Awards, including analysis of Best Picture nominees and their Oscar draft picks.
Dakota Arsenault and Jeff Ballmer introduce an interview with director Alison McAlpine about her Oscar-nominated documentary short 'Perfectly A Strangeness'.
The hosts and guests draft movies predicted to win the most Oscars in 2026, discussing nomination counts and strategies.
In this Oscar-season episode of ContraZoom, host Dakota Arsenault welcomes first-time guest Alicia Brenner, host of the Lorehounds and Star Wars Canon podcasts, to break down the odds for One Battle After Another, Sentimental Value and Begonia.
In this Oscar-season episode of ContraZoom, host Dakota Arsenault welcomes back returning guest Paolo Bautista, host of the Oscars Death Race podcast, to break down the nomination odds for Sinners, Hamnet and F1.
A podcast episode featuring an interview with director Sook-Yin Lee about her Canadian film 'Paying For It', which has set a record for most reviews on Contra Zoom Pod.
Jeff Bollmer interviews director Zacharias Kunuk about his film Wrong Husband at TIFF, discussing his groundbreaking work in Inuit cinema.
Hosts Dakota Arsenault and Jeff Ball preview the 50th Toronto International Film Festival, each naming three films they're excited about.
Host Dakota Arsenault and guest Jeff Ballmer preview their most anticipated films at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.