'Anora' triumphs at a divided and depoliticized Oscars

BarcelonaTen years ago, Sean Baker a movie was released, Tangerine, about two transgender prostitutes from Los Angeles who worked mostly at the intersection of Santa Monica and Highland. Just a fifteen-minute walk from that corner, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Baker collected the Oscar for best film on Monday for another vibrant, tender and funny story about sex workers. Anora, the best film of 2024 according to ARA critics, has won five Oscars: best film, director, actress, original screenplay and editing. A fair and important triumph, because it rewards an independent cinema that is always on the side of the oppressed and the marginalized, that gives voice to the most invisible in American society and that celebrates the beauty and imperfection of its protagonists without paternalism or condescension.

Anora, which last year won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and now the Oscar for best film, thus achieving the two most important awards in the cinematic universe, a milestone that only two films had achieved before: Marty (1955), by Delbert Mann, and Parasites (2019), by Bong Joon-ho. Baker's film also talks about how social inequalities shape our relationships: it stars an erotic dancer at a strip club who meets the son of a Russian oligarch and, in a short time, goes from shaking her ass in front of drunken clients for a few dollars to enjoying a life of luxury (mansion, coats, jewelry, trips to Las Vegas) with a prince charming who has hidden a few realities of his situation in the United States from her.

It is significant that Quentin Tarantino has awarded the Oscar for best director to Sean Baker. The most important American filmmaker of his generation passes the baton to a younger director with whom he shares the passionate defence of cinema as a collective experience in a theatre. "Directors, keep making films for the big screen. I know I will continue to do so," Baker said in an emotional speech. Before that, he had dedicated one of his Oscars to all sex workers, as he had already done in Cannes. Baker, the big winner of the night, takes home four statuettes individually: it is the first time that someone has won four Oscars for the same film, a record not even held by Walt Disney, who won four statuettes at the same gala, but for different films.

Beyond the triumph of Anora, it has been a very evenly distributed edition with prizes for a good part of the favourites: The brutalist It has won the Oscars for best original music, photography and actor (Adrien Brody); Wicked, costumes and artistic direction; Dune: Part 2, sound and visual effects; The substance, better makeup; Conclave, best adapted screenplay; and Emilia Perez, original song and supporting actress (Zoe Saldana). Emilia Perez The award for best international film slipped away, which was ultimately won by the Brazilian drama I'm still here: a night of partying in Brazil, therefore, where the Oscars gala coincided with one of the most important nights of its carnival. If the I'm still here It is the first Oscar in this category that Brazil has won, that of Flow As an animated film it is also the first in Latvia.

Adrien Brody, Oscar and kiss

With the The brutalist, Adrien Brody wins his second Oscar for best actor. If when he received the first one for The pianistIn 2003, he surprised the winner of the award, Halle Berry, with an unsolicited kiss. This time, it was she who surprised him on the red carpet with an unexpected kiss on the lips. Two decades later, Brody made a calm and thoughtful speech about the careers of actors, but when they turned up the music for him to finish, he reacted with temper: "Music off, I'm finishing, seriously. It's not the first time, I know how this goes." If Brody's award was expected, Mickey Madison's award for best actress for Anora The post came as a surprise to everyone, as it seemed to bear Demi Moore's name. Like Baker before her, Madison dedicated it to the sex workers' community: "I will always be their ally."

But it was the other acting categories that provided some of the highlights of the night. For example, seeing how Kieran Culkin, best supporting actor for A real pain, took advantage his frenetic and rushed speech to remind his wife that last year she told him that they would only have a fourth child if she won an Oscar. The woman's face was a poem. Zoe Saldana's husband also had a leading role, whose wife praised her "wonderful hair" when collecting the award for best supporting actress. Emilia PerezSaldaña recalled that she is the "first woman of Dominican origin to win an Oscar" and recalled her origins as the daughter of immigrants. "Winning for a film in which I speak and sing in Spanish would have made my grandmother very happy," she said.

Conan O'Brien and Karla Sofia Gascon

The Oscars have kicked off with a montage of scenes from the city of Los Angeles – a discreet reminder of the fires that the city has suffered – before giving way to musical numbers from the stars of Wicked Ariana Grande (Over the rainbow) and Cynthia Erivo (Defying gravity). In just five minutes the gala was already starting to get long; luckily the presenter Conan O'Brien appeared, who, after making his way through Demi Moore's back in the style of The substance, has made a funny monologue without missing the opportunity to touch on the controversy of the season: "Anora has set a new record for fucks: 479, three more than Karla Sofía Gascón's publicist: "You did what?" An elegant way of handling the elephant in the room, especially since she immediately welcomed Gascón to the Oscars.

O'Brien has fired darts without too much venom at Timothée Chalamet's striking yellow dress or the three and a half hour duration of The brutalist and made a joke about Netflix ("It's the leading Oscar studio in price increases") that may not be repeated next year, since there is a rumor that the Academy is considering the possibility of broadcasting the next edition of the gala precisely through the portal. He was even more spiteful when, halfway through the show, he said: "We've already reached the moment when Kendrick Lamar appears and says that Drake is a pedophile" or, already in the final stretch, "if at this point in the night he is enjoying this, he has Stockholm syndrome." One of the few surprises of the night was the appearance of Mick Jagger on stage to the rhythm of Sympathy for the devil to present the Oscar for best original song, "I wasn't actually the first choice to be here, but Bob Dylan didn't want to come and suggested someone younger to do it," said the Rolling Stones singer.

A gala without a DJ

The ceremony was a smooth affair, with a series of O'Brien antics, sketches, more or less successful award presentations and tributes to figures such as Quincy Jones and Gene Hackman, with a lively pace and few musical numbers – the best being the tribute to the Bond saga with Margaret Qualley showing off her dancing skills. However, it was a fairly apolitical ceremony, with a script that contained virtually no references to current events. In the image of the film industry, the Oscars' reaction to Trump's victory was to take a step back and depoliticise the awards, where Trump's name was never mentioned. The only things that broke this tone were a joke by O'Brien about "standing up to powerful Russians", a spontaneous comment by Daryl Hannah in favour of Ukraine and, of course, the speech by Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, directors and protagonists of the documentary No other land, who have called for an end to "ethnic cleansing" in Palestine and have demanded "the path to a political solution to the conflict", pointing out that "US foreign policy is blocking it".

Oscars 2025 list of winners

Best film

• Anora, by Sean Baker

Best Direction

• Sean Baker by Anora

Best Actress

• Mickey Madison by Anora

Best Actor

• Adrien Brody by The brutalist

Best Supporting Actress

• Zoe Saldana by Emilia Perez

Best supporting actor

• Kieran Culkin for A real pain

Best International Film

• I'm still here, by Walter Salles (Brazil)

Best animated feature film

• Flow, a world to save by Gintes Zilbalodis

Best Documentary

• No other land, by Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Yuval Abraham and Hamdan Ballal

Best Original Screenplay

• Sean Baker by Anora

Best Adapted Screenplay

• Peter Straughan by Conclave

Best Photography

• Lol Crawley by The brutalist

Best editing

• Sean Baker by Anora

Best Original Music

• Daniel Blumberg by The brutalist

Best song

• The evil, of Emilia Perez. Music by Clément Ducol and Camille; lyrics by Clément Ducol, Camille and Jacques Audiard

Better sound

• Gareth John, Richard King, Ron Bartlett and Doug Hemphill for Dune: Part 2

Best Art Direction

• Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales by Wicked

Best costumes

• Paul Tazewell by Wicked

Best makeup and hair

• Pierre-Olivier Persin, Stéphanie Guillon and Marilyne Scarselli for The substance

Best visual effects

• Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe and Gerd Nefzer for Dune: Part 2

Best animated short film

• In the shadow of the cypressby Hossein Molayemi Shirin Sohani

Best short fiction

• I'm not a robot, by Victoria Warmerdam

Best Documentary Short

• The only girl in the orchestra, by Molly O'Brien