LOS ANGELES: “Anora,” a strip club Cinderella story without the fairy tale ending, was crowned best picture at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, handing Sean Baker’s gritty, Brooklyn-set screwball farce Hollywood’s top prize. Sean Baker made Oscar history Sunday at the 97th Academy Awards, becoming the night’s big winner with five statuettes overall, two more than “The Brutalist.”
Baker said his film’s huge Oscar haul was a win for independent films. Mikey Madison won the best actress Oscar on Sunday for “Anora,” a role that catapulted the 25-year-old into a burgeoning film career after achieving initial success on television, while Baker won the best director Oscar.
The night’s first award, presented by Robert Downey Jr., went to Kieran Culkin for best supporting actor. Culkin has cruised through the season, picking up award after award, for his performance alongside Jesse Eisenberg in “A Real Pain.”
Kieran Culkin poses with the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for "A Real Pain" in the Oscars photo room at the 97th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, on March 2, 2025. (REUTERS)
“I have no idea how I got here,” said Culkin, “I’ve just been acting my whole life.”
Culkin spent most of his speech recalling an earlier, hypothetical promise from his wife Jazz Charton, that they could have a fourth child if he won an Oscar. Culkin used the opportunity to take Charton — “love of my life, ye of little faith” — up on the offer.
The biggest upset early on came in the best animated feature category. “Flow,” the wordless Latvian film upset DreamWorks Animations’ “The Wild Robot.” The win for “Flow,” an ecological parable about a cat in a flooded world, was the first Oscar ever for a Latvian film.
“Flow” was made with Blender, a free, open-source graphics software tool using computer generated animation. The result is a dreamy aesthetic paired with a peaceful, yet post-apocalyptic, fable about a black cat, dog, capybara, ring-tailed lemur and secretary bird trying to survive a catastrophic flood. The film has no dialogue and forces viewers to be mesmerized by the unlikely relationship and understanding between the species trying to escape the rising waters.
It’s only Zilbalodis’ second animated film as a director.
Zilbalodis’ unexpected Oscar contender — and now winner — has been welcomed with open arms this award season. The win Sunday adds to an already impressive resume for the new director, which includes a best animated feature win at the Golden Globe Awards and nominations from Critics Choice Awards, Annie Awards and British Academy Film Awards.
The success of the film is shared with producers Matīss Kaža, Ron Dyens and Gregory Zalcman. The Latvian, French and Belgian co-production was also nominated for best international feature film, and is the first Latvian film to be nominated at the Academy Awards.
(L-R) Gints Zilbalodis, Mat?ss Kaža, Ron Dyens, and Gregory Zalcman, winners of the Best Animated Feature Film for “Flow”, pose in the press room during the 97th Annual Oscars at Ovation Hollywood on March 02, 2025 in Hollywood, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
“Thank you to my cats and dogs,” director Gints Zilbalodis accepting the award.
Zoe Saldaña earned her first Academy Award for best supporting actress in “Emilia Pérez,” capping an already accomplished awards season Sunday.
“Mami! Mami!” a tearful Saldaña said. “My mom is here. My whole family is here. I am floored by this honor. Thank you to the academy for recognizing the quiet heroism and the power in a woman like Rita and talking about powerful women. My fellow nominees, the love and community that you have offered to me is a true gift, and I will pay it forward.”
Saldaña accepted the award from the reigning winner in the category, Da’Vine Joy Randolph.
The win adds to a collection of successes for the star on the awards circuit: Saldaña won her first Golden Globe in January, and notched wins at the British Academy Film Awards, the Critics Choice Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Zoe Saldana wins the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for "Emilia Perez" during the Oscars show at the 97th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on March 2, 2025.(REUTERS)
“Wicked” stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo kicked off the ceremony with a tribute to Los Angeles following the wildfires that devastated the Southern California metropolis earlier this year. Grande sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Erivo performed Diana Ross’ “Home” and the “Wicked” stars joined together for “Defying Gravity” from their blockbuster big-screen musical.
Later, “Wicked,” the biggest box-office hit among the best picture nominees, won the award for best costume design, by Paul Tazewell.
“I’m the first Black man to receive the costume design award,” said Tazewell, who couldn’t finish that sentence before the crowd began to rise in a standing ovation. “I’m so proud of this.”
It is his first win and second nomination. He was previously nominated in the category for his work on Steven Spielberg's “West Side Story.”
Before the Oscars, Tazewell won awards at BAFTA, Critics Choice and Costume Designers Guild awards. He's the second Black person to in the category after Ruth E. Carter made history for her work in 2018 for “Black Panther,” which made her the first African American to win in the category.
Paul Tazewell, winner of the Best Costume Design for “Wicked”, poses in the press room during the 97th Annual Oscars at Ovation Hollywood on March 02, 2025 in Hollywood, California. (Getty Images via AFP)
Best makeup and hairstyling went to “The Substance” for its gory creations of beauty and body horror.
Host Conan O’Brien, introduced as “four-time Oscar viewer,” opened the ceremony with genial ribbing of the nominees and the former talk-show host’s trademark self-deprecation.
“‘A Complete Unknown.’ ‘A Real Pain.’ ‘Nosferatu.’ These are just some of the names I was called on the red carpet,” said O’Brien.
O’Brien, hosting for the first time, avoided any political commentary in his opening remarks, but the monologue was a smash hit. O’Brien lent on the disappointed face of John Lithgow, a full-throated “Chalamet!” from Adam Sandler and a gag of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos being delivered to the red carpet in a cardboard box.
O’Brien’s most sincere comments were reserved for Los Angeles, itself, in speaking about the enduring “magic and grandeur” of film in wake of the wildfires. O’Brien, whose house in the Pacific Palisades was spared by the fires, then segued into a musical routine, singing: “I won’t waste time.”
An unpredictable Oscar year
After a topsy-turvy Oscar season in which frontrunners were constantly shuffled, old tweets hobbled a top contender and space was held for “Wicked,” Sunday’s Academy Awards brought to a close one of the most unpredictable Oscar races in recent memory.
Splashes of color decorated the red carpet — Timothée Chalamet in yellow, Ariana Grande in pink, Colman Domingo in red — as stars streamed into the Dolby Theatre. Some attendees sported pins for Ukraine. Guy Pearce, nominated for his performance in “The Brutalist,” wore a “Free Palestine” pin on his lapel.
For the first time, an actor is nominated for playing the sitting US president. Sebastian Stan is nominated for best actor for his performance as a young Donald Trump in “The Apprentice,” as is his co-star, Jeremy Strong, for playing Roy Cohn. Trump has called those involved with the film “human scum.”
The political tenor of this year’s ceremony could be volatile, with the Oscars coming weeks into the second Trump administration and falling two days after the president’s dramatic rupture with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.
This year’s Oscars are unspooling after a turbulent year for the film industry. Ticket sales were down 3 percent from the previous year and more significantly from pre-pandemic times. The strikes of 2023 played havoc with release schedules in 2024. Many studios pulled back on production, leaving many out of work. The fires, in January, only added to the pain.
Last year’s telecast, propelled by the twin blockbusters of “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie,” led the Oscars to a four-year viewership high, with 19.5 million viewers. This year, with smaller independent films favored in the most prominent awards, the academy will be tested to draw as large of an audience.
The ceremony will be taking place days following the death of Gene Hackman. The 95-year-old two-time Oscar winner and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were found dead Wednesday at their New Mexico home. Morgan Freeman is to honor him during the ceremony.
Winners of the gold Oscar statuettes are chosen by the roughly 11,000 actors, producers, directors and film craftspeople who make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
