Sean Baker’s ‘Anora’ Wins Best Picture After a Stunning Oscar Steamroll – Hollywood Reporter

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterSubscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterAdrien Brody wins best actor; ‘I’m Still Here’ takes the international prize.
By

Steven Zeitchik
Senior Editor, Awards
Anora steamrolled through the 2025 Oscars on Sunday, with Sean Baker‘s indie upstart winning five Oscars, including best picture and director, and star Mikey Madison staging an upset for best actress.
“It’s a dream come true. I’m probably going to wake up tomorrow,” Madison said when accepting her prize.

Many of the people involved with the film no doubt felt the same.
Beginning life as an outsider production backed by the New York-based FilmNation before being acquired by Neon, the class commentary took the Palme d’Or at May’s Cannes Film Festival, endured a whole bunch of lulls throughout the season and then emerged Sunday as one of the most dominant Oscar winners in recent memory.

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Baker won for producing, directing, writing and editing his action-tinged black comedy about the relationship between a stripper and a Russian oligarch’s son. Baker’s capturing of four Oscars for the same film is a feat that had never been achieved in Oscar history.
“I saved this film in the edit. That director should never work again,” Baker quipped from the Dolby stage after winning for editing, referring of course to himself.
When he won director, Baker then took the podium and made a plea for the theatrical experience. “Where did we fall in love with movies? At the movie theater,” he said as he emphasized its communal value. “In a time in which the world can feel more divided, this is more important than ever,” he said, imploring studios to make movies for the theater and audiences to see them there.
And when winning picture, Baker saluted the importance of independent film as the rest of the team still seemed stung with disbelief.
“I don’t know how this could be real life,” producer (and Baker wife) Samantha Quan said from the stage.
The win marks another Hollywood-subverting triumph for Tom Quinn’s indie company Neon, which pulled off the same feat five years ago when Parasite came out of nowhere to win best picture and a slew of other top prizes.
A former frontrunner, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, also had a moment when star Adrien Brody took the prize for best actor, his second Oscar after winning for The Pianist more than two decades ago as a 29-year-old. Brody is the youngest best actor winner ever thanks to his role on that film, and he stopped A Complete Unknown star Timothée Chalamet from breaking his record this year. Madison, it’s worth noting, is the first Gen Z winner of an acting prize; no man or woman born after 1991 had ever taken the statuette. Madison was born in 1999.

In a long speech —  Brody stopped the play-off music with “I’ve done this before” —  the actor talked a lot about not taking success for granted and gave a tearful homage to his parents, partner Georgina Chapman and his stepchildren. But he ended it with a powerful social comment, describing “the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression and of antisemitism and racism and othering” and said “I pray for a healthier happier and more inclusive world.”
He added, “If the past can teach anything it’s a reminder to not let hate go unchecked.” It was a powerful statement from a ceremony that had not seen so direct a plea until that point.
Coming into the ceremony, the Anora train could potentially have been stopped by Conclave. The two films were considered frontrunners for best picture after having each won major precursor awards, the top PGA and DGA prizes for Anora and BAFTA and SAG for Conclave. The latter on Sunday won adapted screenplay — Peter Straughan took the prize for his script of the jockeying beyond the scenes at the Vatican to replace a recently departed pope — but no other prizes.
Supporting actor honors went to the expected contenders. Kieran Culkin won the first prize of the night, taking the supporting actor award for playing Benji Kaplan, a fast-talking and vulnerable lost soul in Jesse Eisenberg’s Holocaust-history dramedy A Real Pain.
The win mark’s Culkin’s first Oscar in a 35-year career; he had been getting awards attention lately for his former hit HBO show Succession. “I don’t know how I got here. I’ve just been acting my whole life,” said Culkin, 42. He also told a detailed story about negotiating with his wife to have more kids if he wins more awards, which he has now done.

And Zoe Saldaña took supporting actress for her role as Rita Mora Castro, a Mexico City lawyer who helps a drug kingpin transition in Jacques Audiard’s musical drama Emilia Pérez. She cited “the quiet heroism and power in a woman” like her character and also noted that she is “a proud child of immigrant parents” and the “first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award; I know I will not be the last.” (See the star-studded Oscars red carpet 2025 arrivals.)
In the animated category, Flow pulled off a surprise win over DreamWorks Animation/Universal Pictures’ The Wild Robot. The wordless Latvian environmental parable had a much smaller budget and distributor (Sideshow/Janus) than Robot, but charmed voters with its unusual approach. Writer-director Gints Zilbalodis thanked his “mom and dad, and cats and dogs” in his acceptance speech.
“I hope it will open doors to independent animated filmmakers around the world,” he said. The movie may have been the beneficiary of a newer, more international-minded voting bloc, which is less invested in the Hollywood studio system than traditional Academy members.
Zilbalodis offered a message of global unity amid crisis. “We are all in the same boat; we must overcome our differences and find ways to work together,” he said, as he accepted an honor for a movie which also has creatures facing cataclysm.
The movie was attempting the unprecedented feat of also winning best international feature. That prize, however, went to Brazil’s I’m Still Here, Walter Salles’ look at a Rio family victimized by Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970’s. Keyed by a simmering performance from Fernanda Torres, the anti-fascist film was one of the more political winners of the night.

The Brutalist, a heavy contender earlier in the season after its Golden Globes win for best drama, nabbed two other awards when Lol Crawley took home the prize for cinematography and Daniel Blumberg won for original score.
Many of the crafts honors went to box office smashes. Dune: Part Two took home two awards, for sound and visual effects. Wicked won a pair of prizes after stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande opened the Oscars with an Oz medley, including “Defying Gravity.”
Production design honors went to Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales for their elaborate work in the Ozian world. Crowley took home an Oscar after six previous nominations left him empty handed. Costume design saw Wicked’s Paul Tazewell continue his streak of awards this season for his whimsical aesthetic populating the cinematic world of the Broadway hit. Tazewell became the first Black man to win an Oscar for costume design, a fact he noted jubilantly from the stage and O’Brien echoed a few moments later. Tazewell also has an Emmy and Tony on his mantle.
And in the the-more-you-know department, The New Yorker won its first Oscar after 17 nominations when I Am Not a Robot, Victoria Warmerdam’s head-trip of a film about a sound engineer who discovers she might secretly be an AI, took home the prize for live action short.
The show had a languid pace, with long tributes to individual nominees from presenters and a choreographed musical homage to James Bond and the Broccoli family, which took on a weird undertone in the wake of the sale of creative control of the property to Amazon-MGM.

The grab-bag continued when Mick Jagger turned up to present the award for original song.
“I wasn’t the first choice,” he said. “The producers really wanted Bob Dylan to do it.” Jagger said Dylan deferred to someone younger, leading to the appearance of the Rolling Stones frontman. (Dylan is 83, Jagger is 81.) He then announced the statuette for El Mal, the thumping anti-elites anthem from Emilia Perez by Audiard, Camille and Clément Ducol, marking Audiard’s first-ever Oscar.
“We hope it speaks to the role music and art can continue to play as a force of the good and progress in the world,” Camille said accepting the prize as Jagger looked on.
Political moments were scattered throughout the show. Presenter Daryl Hannah said “Slava Ukraini” and saluted the Ukrainian people as “badasses” when she took the stage.
Upon accepting the original screenplay prize, meanwhile, Baker said, “I want to thank the sex worker community. They have shared their stories; they have shared their experiences over the years,” noting his “deep respect” for those people in that industry.
And when No Other Land — the undistributed film about the Israeli military’s actions in the West Bank and how they affect one family and community — was announced as the winner for best documentary, filmmakers were pointed in their remarks.
“My hope to my daughter is she will not have to live the same life I’m living now, always feeling surveillance and home demolitions and forced displacement that my community is facing every day,” said Basel Adra, a co-director who is one of the fim’s subjects. Yuval Abraham, the Israeli peace activist who also directed the movie and is featured in it, noted a “different path, a political solution without supremacy and with national rights for both our people.” He said that “foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.”

The awards began after an extended opening that lasted nearly a half hour. It featured a cinematic tribute to Los Angeles, the Erivo and Grande duet, an Adam Sandler cameo, and host Conan O’Brien riffing, singing and saluting “the magic, madness, grandeur and the joy of film” in the face of tragedy. There were also many jokes about Chalamet’s youth and yellow suit.
A tribute to LAFD firefighters was laced with humor — one quipped that he felt bad about the people who recently lost their homes, “the producers of Joker 2.” But the show conjured a particularly somber In Memoriam, which included a recently added intro as Morgan Freeman came out to salute his friend and Unforgiven co-star Gene Hackman, who was found dead last week.
After noting that Hackman said he just wanted to be remembered for doing good work, Freeman said, “Gene, you’ll be remembered for that and for so much more.” The orchestral tribute that followed concluded by honoring David Lynch, James Earl Jones and Hackman, three greats who died in the last six months.
A separate musical tribute was performed by Queen Latifah for the recently departed Quincy Jones, who was nominated for seven Oscars and also executive produced an Oscars telecast. “Quincy was love lived out loud in human form,” Oprah Winfrey said, joining Whoopi Goldberg to introduce Latifah.
But for all those big personalities, the evening belonged to the unexpected figures of Anora.
“Thank you, Brighton Beach,” Madison said as she saluted the outerborough New York Russian-immigrant neighborhood where her film was set, a fitting coda to a night honoring outsiders. Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every daySign up for THR news straight to your inbox every daySubscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterSend us a tip using our anonymous form.

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/oscars-2025-recap-highlights-winners-1236152148/