Die My Love missing a best cinematography nod is the most outrageous 2026 Oscars snub — but Seamus McGarvey's starter camera kit is exactly what any budding filmmaker needs

I could listen to this man talk for hours

23 Jan 2026, 15:00 · TechRadar

Features By Jasmine Valentine published 23 January 2026

Jennifer Lawrence isn't the only powerhouse in this movie. (Image credit: MUBI) Share Share by:

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When I had the chance to speak to Die My Love cinematographer Seamus McGarvey some months ago, I didn't even question that he'd be nominated for an Oscar. He was fresh from an awards win at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) and is currently on the longlist for a BAFTA.

So when the 2026 Oscar nominations came out on January 22, I was aghast to find he was missing. With some of the most striking, risky, and startling visuals we've seen on screen in the past year, Die My Love's look is just as much of a character as Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson).

Thankfully, the movie is now available to stream on MUBI as of today (January 23), so you can see what I mean for yourself. If you're a budding filmmaker or tech nerd – of course, you're the latter, that's why you're on this website – and want to know how to replicate Die My Love's distinct abstract flavor, I've got the answers for you.

Die My Love brings back ektachrome in a big, bold way

DIE MY LOVE | Official Trailer | Now Streaming | With Jennifer Lawrence & Robert Pattinson - YouTube

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"I just love telling stories with whatever camera I can get my hands on," McGarvey tells me. "But when I have the joy of shooting on film when the budget allows for it, it's great because it's a poetic distance from the real.

"I think early on, Lynne [Ramsay] and I had discussions about what film stock to use and how we were going to approach the day and night scenes, and the peculiar depiction of postpartum depression in a woman who's recently given birth. It's a type of madness, really, that a person feels, so we wanted to find a way of expressing that pictorially, not being quite tethered in night or day. So we both said, why not Ektachrome? Because it's a color film,but not real, it makes everything look slightly hyper-real.

He continues, "The connotation of it is that things have gone wrong and the color is over-ripe and almost rotten, so that we thought that's perfect. So when we tested that, we realized that that was the film stock to use for the daytime stuff. All the nighttime scenes in the film that you see are shot in plain daylight, like midday or full sun. But we wanted there to be a strange, almost nightmarish moonlit quality. So that was done in the grade and with filters, very heavily smoked up filters that we used with candle smoke.

"That was great fun to do, because you just smoke up a clear glass and then paint out the bits that you want to see, and the rest falls into murky, inky blackness. Even the Sun becomes a moon."

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