‘Anora’ triumphs with 5 Oscar wins including Best Picture

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Anora, an independent film about a brief, ill-fated romance between a sex worker and the son of a Russian oligarch, took home the Best Picture prize along with four others at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday.

The film’s director, Sean Baker, also took home the Best Director award, ahead of Brady Corbet for The Brutalist and James Mangold for the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, which starred Timothée Chalamet.

Anora’s lead Mikey Madison won Best Actress, while the film also earned editing and original screenplay awards.

“I thank the academy for recognising a truly independent film,” Baker said in his acceptance speech. He also thanked “the sex worker community” and offered his “deepest respect” as he received the screenplay award.

The win for Madison, 25, was something of an upset. Demi Moore, 62, had been favoured for her role in The Substance, an edgy body horror parable in which she plays an ageing actress who takes a serum in hopes of reclaiming her youth and career.

Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor for his performance in A Real Pain, in which he plays the gregarious but troubled cousin of writer/director Jesse Eisenberg on an odd-couple tour of their family’s Holocaust history in Poland.

The ceremony took place less than two months after catastrophic fires displaced nearly 13,000 households in Los Angeles and affecting many in the industry.

The event’s opening montage featured clips from films in which the city was as much a character as the setting, including Chinatown, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Big Lebowski.

“The people of LA have been through a devastating ordeal,” said Conan O’Brien, who hosted this year’s awards. Later in the show, 12 members of the Los Angeles Fire Department were honoured onstage.

Hollywood also has been shaken by US President Donald Trump’s assault on diversity polices and immigration crackdown, but the ceremony was light on politics.

Before handing out the award for film editing, Daryl Hannah flashed a peace sign and offered a “message of support for Ukraine: ‘Slava Ukraini.’”

There were scattered jeers after No Other Land, a collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers about the destruction of West Bank villages, won in the Best Documentary category. The film does not have a US distributor.

Speaking about Anora’s success, O’Brien joked: “Americans are finally excited to see someone stand up to a powerful Russian.”

Netflix’s musical Emilia Pérez, which was the early frontrunner with 13 nominations including Best Picture, in the end took home just two awards: Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldaña and Best Original Song.

The streaming company had hoped Emilia Pérez would bring home its first Best Picture statue, but the film became engulfed in controversy after historical social media posts by lead Karla Sofía Gascón resurfaced in which she made controversial comments about George Floyd’s murder, Muslims and other topics.

Gascón, the first openly trans person to be nominated for an Oscar, was subsequently scrubbed from Netflix’s promotions for the film.

A24’s The Brutalist, a three-and-a-half-hour epic about a Hungarian-Jewish émigré architect in postwar America, had received 10 nominations, including for Corbet’s direction. In addition to Brody’s acting Oscar, it also won for cinematography and original score.