2025 Oscars adore ‘Anora’: Indie film scores 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Actress, Director
Marcus Errico
After months of hype, campaigning, predictions, pivots, and controversies large and small, the 2025 Oscars finally arrived to provide clarity in what seemed to be the most wide-open awards season in years.
But in the end it was all Anora. Sean Baker's film, about a Brooklyn sex worker who falls for the slacker son of a Russian oligarch, won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Mikey Madison for Best Actress (over presumptive favorite The Substance's Demi Moore), Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing. Baker accounted for four of those wins — picture, director, original screenplay, and editing — making history in the process.
Two-time Holocaust survivor Adrien Brody became a two-time Oscar winner, taking Best Actor for his turn as a Hungarian immigrant in The Brutalist. Brody used his acceptance speech to speak out against the charged political climate and attacks on underrepresented communities: "Let's fight for what's right... let's keep loving one another." (In a callback to his first win for The Pianist 22 years ago, Halle Berry turned the tables by planting a kiss on Brody on the red carpet.)
The supporting races went chalk. Kieran Culkin capped a dominating awards run by scoring the Best Supporting Actor statuette for A Real Pain, while Zoe Saldaña followed a similar precursor romp with Best Supporting Actress for Emilia Pérez, despite controversy surrounding the film. “My grandmother came to this country in 1961 — I am a proud child of immigrant parents,” Saldaña proclaimed to resounding applause. “With dreams and dignity and hard-working hands, and I am the first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award, and I know I will not be the last.
Conclave, an eight-time nominee considered a contender for Best Picture, finished with a single Oscar, for adapted screenplay. That was better than A Complete Unknown: the Bob Dylan biopic also came in with eight nominations, but was blanked.
I'm Still Here was named Best Internation Feature, winning Brazil's first Oscar, while No Other Land, a Palestian-Israeli collaboration about the occupied West Bank, won Best Documentary Feature.
In one of the night's few other upsets, the charming Flow captured Best Animated Feature over The Wild Robot — and became the first Oscar winner for Latvia.
Conan O'Brien, in his first stint as Oscar host, kept the night moving along with his patented self-deprecating humor and an musical sandworm from Dune.
Here's the complete list of winners at 97th Academy Awards:
BEST PICTURE
[winner] Anora
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
I’m Still Here
Nickel Boys
The Substance
Wicked
BEST DIRECTOR
Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
[winner] Sean Baker, Anora
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance
James Mangold, A Complete Unknown
BEST ACTRESS
Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
[winner] Mikey Madison, Anora
Demi Moore, The Substance
Fernanda Torres, I'm Still Here
BEST ACTOR
[winner] Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
Ariana Grande, Wicked
Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
[winner] Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Yura Borisov, Anora
[winner] Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
A Complete Unknown
[winner] Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Nickel Boys
Sing Sing
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
[winner] Anora
The Brutalist
A Real Pain
September 5
The Substance
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
[winner] Flow
Inside Out 2
Memoir of a Snail
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The Wild Robot
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Black Box Diaries
[winner] No Other Land
Porcelain War
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
Sugarcane
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
Emilia Pérez
Flow
The Girl With the Needle
[winner] I'm Still Here
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
BEST ANIMATED SHORT
“Beautiful Men”
[winner] “In the Shadow of the Cypress”
“Magic Candies”
“Wander to Wonder”
“Yuck!”
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
“Death by Numbers”
“I Am Ready, Warden”
“Incident”
“Instruments of a Beating Heart”
[winner] “The Only Girl in the Orchestra”
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
“A Lien”
“Anuja”
[winner] “I’m Not a Robot”
“The Last Ranger”
“The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent”
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
[winner] The Brutalist
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Maria
Nosferatu
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Gladiator II
Nosferatu
[winner] Wicked
BEST FILM EDITING
[winner] Anora
The Brutalist
Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Wicked
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
A Different Man
Emilia Pérez
Nosferatu
[winner] The Substance
Wicked
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
The Brutalist
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Nosferatu
[winner] Wicked
BEST SCORE
[winner] The Brutalist
Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Wicked
The Wild Robot
BEST SONG
[winner] "El Mal," from Emilia Pérez
"The Journey," from The Six Triple Eight
"Like a Bird," from Sing Sing
"Mi Camino," from Emilia Pérez
“Never Too Late,” from Elton John: Never Too Late
BEST SOUND
A Complete Unknown
[winner] Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Wicked
The Wild Robot
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Alien: Romulus
Better Man
[winner] Dune: Part Two
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Wicked
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Anora winning Editing and Screenplay means it is bound to win Picture and Actress 🙁 Too bad for Demi Moore I really like her to win
Don’t worry. Demi will still win. She has the narrative. Sadly Mikey won’t win. But it would’ve been really cool if Mikey won.
No. I think Madison will win because Oscars don’t care about narratives. Chad Boswick, Glenn Close and Annette Bening are just proofs of this. 🙁
Over-joyed at Flow winning Best Animated Feature and Zoe Saldaña winning Best Supporting Actress
If Madison wins it may turn the trend of the older best actress winners of late, they may not get another chance for a decade, it’s going back to the inguene
There are over 10,000 oscar voters. There isn’t some secret agenda where they all get together and decide where the awards are going…
You’ve marked The Brutalist as winning best director by mistake. It was Sean Baker – Anora.
Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Corbet’s film is a masterpiece and deserved more than it got.
Sean Baker did not deserve 4 oscars, sorry, that was WAY too generous, He deserved one for Screenplay. The Brutalist is a Masterpiece and should’ve won for Film and Director.
I felt that even though Anora was a much more enjoyable film. Demi dug deeper into her core to pull out the Performance of her career, and we don’t know how great of an actress Mickey Madison is yet with just this one showcase film. I also thought the Editing of Conclave was better than Sean bakers. or even the brutalist, in that there was so much more work involved. And Jeremy Strong was Robbed, Culkin knows it, he lost because his film was about Trump. Although likable, Kulkin seemed to be playing himself.