Mank is a personal feature for David Fincher, who directed the Netflix film based on a decades-long project originally conceived by his father, Jack.

Oscars: David Fincher’s Netflix Picture ‘Mank’

The black-and-white homage to 1930s Hollywood stars Gary Oldman as scandalous scriptwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, a raconteur alcoholic who systematically destroys his relationships to craft the infamously gossipy Citizen Kane screenplay. Fincher spent years working on Mank‘s story outline with his now-deceased dad, starting in the 1980s, until they had whittled down the historical components into a grand portrait of a truth-teller who is eventually squeezed out of his profession. Both Minari and Mank question what it takes to persevere for the sake of a dream — and whether one’s legacy is worth all the suffering.