Independent film “Anora” became the surprise winner at the 97th Academy Awards, taking home five awards from six nominations in a massive win for small-budget filmmaking.
The complex drama took home a sweep of three major awards: Best Picture, Best Director to Sean Baker, and Best Actress to Mikey Madison, while also picking up Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Baker’s introspective film focuses on the human side behind the outward appearance of sex workers, and is his first film to receive widespread acclaim.
With only a $6 million budget, “Anora” is the third indie film of the 2020s to win Best Picture, following in the footsteps of “Nomadland” (2020) and “CODA” (2021).
Baker’s massive win at his first Academy Awards comes after a career of introspective films focused on classism and dedicated his speech to the experience of watching films in a movie theater, calling movie directors to keep making films “for the big screen,” calling it, “a vital part of our culture.”
“Anora” was followed in wins by the three-hour and 35-minute juggernaut, “The Brutalist.” Made on a $10 million budget, the epic took home three of its 10 nominations: Best Original Score, Best Cinematography and Best Actor to Adrien Brody for his intense performance as a Jewish Hungarian-born architect who survived the Holocaust.
“Winning an award like this symbolizes a destination,” Brody said in his Oscar-record 5 minute and 36 minute acceptance speech. “Beyond the pinnacle of a career, it is a chance to begin again and the opportunity to hopefully be fortunate enough that I can prove I am worthy of such…roles.”
Wordless arthouse film “Flow” took home its second major Best Animated Feature award after winning it at the Golden Globes two months earlier. The only Latvian film ever to win an Academy Award, “Flow” produced on only $4 million, winning over Dreamworks’ hopeful “The Wild Robot” and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.”
On the less joyful side of the Academy Awards, “Emilia Peréz,” embroiled in controversy, only found two awards from its 13 nominations in Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song. A critical darling with 10 nominations at the Golden Globes and 11 at the British Academy Film Awards, the film holds low audience scores on fan review aggregate sites (6.0 on Metacritic, 2/5 on Letterboxd, 16% on Rotten Tomatoes). The controversial story found disdain from viewers who believe the portrayal of transgender people and Mexican culture was misappropriated in poor, comedic and unauthentic taste.
Questions on the proper allocation of awards at the Oscars were also under scrutiny, primarily after Zoe Saldaña's win for Best Supporting Actress in “Emilia Perez.” While Karla Sofía Gascón was nominated for Best Actress, Saldaña both opens the film and features for five more minutes than Gascon (57 minutes and 50 seconds to 52 minutes and 21 seconds).
Two Best Picture nominees and major blockbusters that failed to earn quite as many awards as they hoped were “Wicked,” based on the 1995 book of the same name and “Dune: Part Two,” based on the second half of Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel.
With a combined 15 nominations costing a combined $340 million in production, “Wicked” took Best Costume Design and Best Production Design back to the Emerald City while “Dune: Part Two” settled for the technical awards, winning Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.
With their nine combined awards to their names, “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” and “Flow” proved that massive budgets are not always needed to create a compelling story and visual masterpiece.
