It truly was the greatest night of their lives, as the entire cast and crew of Anora dominated the 97th Academy Awards with five Oscar wins in Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing (all of whom went to Sean Baker, tying Walt Disney as the recipient with the most Oscars won by a person in a single year). Mikey Madison, with only a win from BAFTA, won the Best Actress Oscar, becoming the ninth youngest Best Actress winner in Oscar history at twenty-five. This marks Neon’s second Palme d’Or winner to translate to a Best Picture win after making history with Parasite (2019).
Another indie studio, A24, walked home with three Oscar wins for their epic, The Brutalist, in Best Actor for Adrien Brody (his second Best Actor win after winning for 2002’s The Pianist), Best Cinematography for Lol Crawley, and Best Original Score for Daniel Blumberg. A24 acquired the film after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Flow, became Latvia’s first Oscar win in any category, upsetting major Hollywood studios such as Pixar and Dreamworks as the first indie film to win Best Animated Feature.
In what was seen as a fraught and chaotic awards season, beginning with The Brutalist and Emilia Perez winning the Golden Globes, Perez nabbing a record-making thirteen Oscar nominations, Conclave winning Best Film at BAFTA and Best Ensemble Cast at the SAG Awards, it was the guilds, such as the Producers (PGA), Directors (DGA), and Writers (WGA) Guild of America Awards, that cemented Anora as the heavy-favorite with its wins replicating at the Oscars, alongside its sole win for Best Film at Critics Choice.
The major wins for Anora speak to momentum shifting throughout a chaotic awards season. The film didn’t win any Golden Globes, it nabbed six Oscar nominations (all in key categories), and its specific guild wins didn’t translate to other organizations such as BAFTA and Critics Choice (outside of wins for Actress and Best Film, respectively). And with the arrival of new contenders, it seemed uncertain if a small indie darling like Anora could triumph in an industry that is a constant battle between mainstream and indie sensibilities.
Ever since its debut at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, it was always a question if the indie darling could break through the mainstream of big studio contenders, especially in comparison to the grand epic scopes of The Brutalist or the conventionality of a studio prestige picture like Conclave. Anora also doesn’t boast any big star talents and Baker has never had his films break through the Oscar bubble, aside from Willem Dafoe’s nomination for The Florida Project (2017). Yet, none of it mattered. With amazing critical scores and a high Letterboxd rating, the film captured the attention of cinephiles and awards voters for its mix of intimate character drama and a sustained tone of slapstick comedy.
We’ve noticed in recent years when Academy voters love a certain film, spreading the wealth to other contenders is the last thing on their minds. The Daniels won three Oscars for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), Bong Joon-Ho won three Oscars for Parasite, Alejandro G. Iñárritu took three Oscars for Birdman (2014), all in the same categories Baker won, outside of Film Editing. My comparison for Anora this season was Birdman. A film that doesn’t do well with Globes, BAFTA, and Critics Choice, yet does an immense sweep of guild wins (excluding WGA since Birdman was ineligible).
Even when Anora failed to win the SAG Ensemble, Oscar voting had already closed, and what was fresh in voters’ minds was that Anora had won those major guilds, and Madison had won Best Actress at BAFTA. Madison’s win perfectly resembles Frances McDormand’s third Best Actress win for Nomadland (2020), where she only won BAFTA and nothing else.
I reasoned that Madison being a newcomer would hurt her compared to Demi Moore being more familiar with Hollywood, exhibited with The Substance, winning Globe, Critics Choice, and SAG. However, we’ve learned that if an acting contender wins a major precursor and their film is closest to winning Best Picture, don’t bet against them. We thought we learned this lesson last year when Emma Stone won her second Oscar over Lily Gladstone, as Poor Things was the perceived runner-up for the top prize (winning three other Oscars) over Killers of the Flower Moon. Still, it’s a lesson we needed to be reminded of. Yet Mubi should still celebrate, as the indie studio/streaming service earned their first Oscar win for Hair & Makeup for The Substance and their campaign for Moore was a formidable one that made the race a true nail-biter.
We saw another shift in momentum with I’m Still Here winning Best International feature over the presumed frontrunner, Emilia Perez. On paper, Perez won the Globe, Critics Choice, and BAFTA equivalents for International Film. Yet the controversy sparked from its lead, Karla Sofia Gascon quelled the euphoric high when the film landed thirteen nominations. Additionally, the surprise Best Picture nomination for I’m Still Here made it the first time two films in the International Feature category were nominated for Best Picture. It meant voters would start to catch up on I’m Still Here if they missed it earlier in the year, and with its incredible critical and audience scores, plus the pure passionate love from Brazilians championing the film, Perez couldn’t overcome the shifting tides.
Flow benefited from a momentum shift, too. The Wild Robot won Critics Choice, PGA, the Annie awards, seen as the frontrunner for Animated Feature. Yet, the little Latvian film about a black cat and a group of animals surviving a mass flood proved too irresistible with its Globe win, also earning a Best International Feature nomination, a first for Latvia.
What did we learn from this awards season? The Oscars are truly an international awards body. Ever since the “Oscars So White” controversy that stained the institution in 2016, there has been a considerable effort by the Academy to expand its membership to include more non-white and international voters.
What do Anora, Flow, Emilia Perez, The Substance have in common? They all premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. What do The Brutalist and I’m Still Here have in common? They premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Two of the most prestigious international film festivals have platformed films that, in total, won thirteen Oscar statues. It speaks to the expansion of international membership the Academy has implemented for the past decade. The diversity of a global film community has made it so that films that carry the prestige of hailing from Cannes or Venice have a very strong chance of winning Oscars due to the overlap in sensibilities of voters’ taste. All six films have won a prize at either festival, and that mark of debuting at a prestigious festival can prove to be vital for a film’s Oscar chances.
This has been an incredible awards season journey. If there’s one thing to say I’m proud of, it’s the immense podcasts and writing everyone at The Rolling Tape has contributed. It’s been a pleasure documenting this season, and we can’t wait to return for the 2026 Oscars and continue sharing our thoughts.
Article Courtesy of Amritpal Rai
Feature Image Credit to KVNU; Pictures: Sean Baker, Director of Best Picture Winner ‘Anora,’ with his four Oscars