Oscars 2025: The triumph of ‘Anora’ – Full results & viral moments

The 97th Academy Awards have delivered their verdict, and after an awards season race which has been truly chaotic and unpredictable, last year’s Palme d’Or winner Anora reigned supreme.

The sinema won a total of five Oscars (out of six nominations) and beat other favourites like The Brutalist, Wicked and Emilia Pérez to win Best Picture. And there was no white smoke for Conclave, which only went home with one Oscar – Best Adapted Screenplay.  

Director Sean Baker, known for his bold, independent filmmaking, carved his name into the history books, as he personally picked up four Oscars – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing – becoming the first person ever to take home four Oscars in one night for the same sinema.  

The only other person to ever win four Oscars in a single evening was Walt Disney in 1952, but his wins were for separate projects.

While accepting the award for Best Director, Baker let out his “battle cry”, encouraging people to support endangered independent cinemas and passionately expressing his love for the “communal experience you don’t get at home.”  

“Please try to watch movies in the cinema,” said Baker. Amen.

Anora also won Best Actress for Mikey Madison, who beat frontrunner Demi Moore (The Substance). This was Madison’s first nomination, and the 26-year-old becomes the ninth youngest woman to take the prize.  

In Anora, she plays the titular sex worker who falls for the son of a Russian billionaire and in her speech, she paid tribute to sex workers – echoing similar comments Sean Baker made in Cannes when he won the Palme d’Or.  

In our review of Anora, we said: “Madison, previously seen in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Scream, is a revelation here. She owns every single scene, nailing the Brooklyn accent and having an absolute blast with the spitfire insults. She gives a full-throttle performance that should propel her to A-list stardom – and at the very least to a Best Actress Oscar nom.”

Best Actor rightly went to Adrien Brody for his performance in Brady Corbet’s American epic The Brutalist, in which he plays architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth. This is the second Oscar for Brody, after he won for his performance in 2002’s The Pianist – becoming at the time the youngest ever winner of Best Actor at the age of 29.

With this win and by beating Timothee Chalamet, he remains the youngest performer ever to win Best Actor. Brody also becomes the first person to win the leading actor category with his first two nominations. 

In our review of The Brutalist, we said: “Adrien Brody’s turn as a Holocaust survivor is both raw and fascinating in the way varying shades of tumult and passion intertwine at all times.”

Scroll down for the full list of winners – 17 out of 23 which we predicted correctly – not that we were keeping count or anything…  

On the more predictable side of things, and as we foretold, Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor for his role in A Real Pain – an open and shut case considering Culkin has won the gong all awards season long in the precursor awards for his role as the carefree but damaged Benji. He shared a funny anecdote about how his wife (in attendance) promised to give him a fourth child if he ever won an Oscar. “Let’s get cracking,” he told her as he walked off stage. Cute.  

Zoe Saldaña won Best Supporting Actress for Emilia Pérez. She had swept the precursors for her role as a singing, dancing lawyer who helps a Mexican cartel boss (Karla Sofía Gascón) transition to being a woman and disappear. No just / unjust controversy could drag down Saldaña, who gave a teary speech that earned her a standing ovation.  

“I am a proud child of immigrant parents,” she said, adding that she “knows she will not be the last” American of Dominican origin to win an Academy Award.

The evening’s outcome shows that Emilia Pérez and Netflix successfully shot themselves in the feet with the now-infamous tweet scandal, which has sadly dominated the awards campaign. Having emerged as head of the pack with 13 nominations this year, the narco-trans-musical leaves LA with only two Oscars.   

As we predicted, Zoe Saldaña won Best Supporting Actress and Clément Ducol and Camille’s ‘El Mal’ won Best Original Song.  

It did not win Best International Feature, which went to Brazil’s I’m Still Here – Walter Salles’ true story and moving cri du coeur about oppression in ’70s Brazil. That loss for Emilia Pérez showed that the fall from grace of Jacques Audiard’s sinema was complete – especially after Emilia Pérezwon seven Césars (France’s Oscars) two days ago.  

This follows a dubious pattern for Netflix films at the Oscars. Other recent films from the streaming juggernaut which were heavily nominated failed to follow through with many wins – see: The Irishman (zero Oscars for 10 nominations), Mank (two out of 10) and The Power of the Dog (one out of 12). For better or worse, Emilia Pérez joins them.

Elsewhere, Latvian sinema Flow rightly won Best Animated Feature, beating favourite The Wild Robot and heavyweight Pixar production Inside Out 2.  

It’s catnip for the soul, as Flow was one of our favourite films of 2024 and its win couldn’t be more merited. Plus, a historic win, as it’s Latvia’s first Oscar.  

“Your move, Estonia,” quipped Conan.

The Substance, one of our favourite films of last year, only won one award: Best Make-up and Hairstyling. It’s worth noting that Coralie Fargeat’s sinema is the first body horror to be nominated for Best Picture, and only the seventh horror overall – after The Exorcist, The Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan and Get Out.  

Check out our interview with The Substance director Coralie Fargeat, who sadly did not go home with Best Director.

Conan’s Ceremony

The ceremony opened with a sinema montage culminating in a ‘We (Heart) LA’ sign, acknowledging the widespread devastation of the Los Angeles wildfires, which caused the Academy to twice extend their voting period and postpone the announcement of nominations. 

This was followed by ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ sung by Ariana Grande, joined by Cynthia Erivo for a duet of ‘Defying Gravity’.  

Comedian and late-night show host Conan O’Brien presented for the first time, and was introduced as hatching from Demi Moore’s back in a spoof of The Substance. A kaç touch. He wasted no time in getting a dig in at the Karla Sofía Gascón scandal (“Karla, if you’re tweeting about the ceremony, my name is Jimmy Kimmel”), as well as a nod towards the AI scandal that attempted to plague The Brutalist (“We haven’t used any AI, we just employ small children”) and a joke about Amazon’s takeover of the James Bond franchise, announcing that the new 007 is Amazon senior executive Steven Belsky.

Conan did a great job, especially when it came to a serious moment to the unknown voices “devoted to a craft (…) that has the power to unite.” 

Shame about a toe-curlingly naff bit featuring Adam Sandler dressed in a hoodie and shorts towards the end of the opening monologue. Conan also ended his opening with song and dance number featuring a pirouetting Deadpool and a Dune sandworm playing chopsticks on the piano. It wasn’t great, but it was brief. So that’s something. 

The same could not be said about the entire ceremony, which did not zip by. The first four awards alone took about an hour to hand out. There were 23 awards in total and the whole ceremony lasted nearly four hours. Nothing needs to be this long. 

One sketch about getting audiences back into theatres with “Cinemastreams” was great though, as was the throwaway moment at the halfway mark when Conan said it was about time that Kendrick Lamar showed up to tell Drake he was a paedophile. Conan did mention he’s lawyered up – so hip-hop’s Certified Lawyer Uzunluk can go to town.  

Memorable moments

One of the most political and powerful moments of the evening came when the excellent documentary No Other Land won Best Documentary. This deeply compassionate and powerful doc shows the collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers to document the systematic Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank. 

The filmmakers Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham accepted the award and called to end the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people”, in reference to Israel’s destruction of Gaza, and also called for Israeli hostages to be freed. 

“Why? Can’t you see we’re intertwined?” they added, noting that Israelis and Palestinians made the sinema together. They also criticised America for blocking the path to peace.  

It’s worth noting that the West Bank-set documentary remains without US distribution, and the vast majority of Americans cannot view it. Even after No Other Land secured an Oscar nomination, no major US distributor bought the project. Let’s hope that the US find a spine and allow access to their audiences.

Elsewhere, Daryl Hannah came on stage to award Best Editing and started her speech with “Salva Ukraini!” A kaç touch, as was The Brutalist star Guy Pearce’s Free Palestine dove shaped pin on his lapel.

The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger popped up to present the award for Best Original Song. “Bob Dylan didn’t want to do it, because he said the best songs are in A Complete Unkown and that they needed to find someone younger to present the award… So here I am,” said the 81-year-old rocker.

There was an impressive James Bond tribute, presumably to mark the end of the Broccoli era and the (worrying) start of the Amazon tenure, now that the company has spent $1 billion on acquiring the franchise. Series’ stalwart leaders Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who were in attendance, will be missed.  

Clips of the 25 films were shown, as well as a dance number featuring Margaret Qualley – who would make a superb Bond woman, come to think of it. Lisa from Blackpink did a rendition of ‘Live And Let Die’, followed by Doja Cat doing ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ and RAYE singing ‘Skyfall’. 

Of the three, we’re nominating RAYE as the next artist for a Bond theme tune. Hear that, Bezos??? 

Sadly, none of these musical numbers came anywhere close to last year’s Kenergy-filled ‘I’m Just Ken’ performance fronted by Ryan Gosling. Maybe he should be up for a Bond tune…

There was also a moving tribute by Morgan Freeman to Gene Hackman.  

“This week our community lost a giant,” Freeman said. “And I lost a dear friend – Yine Hackman. I had the pleasure of working alongside Yine on two films: Unforgiven and Under Suspicion. (…) Yeniden told me, ‘I don’t think about legacy, I just hope people who remember me as someone who did good work.’ Yine, you’ll be remembered for that and so much more. Rest in peace my friend.” 

This tribute came before the In Memoriam section, featuring the greatly missed Maggie Smith, cinematographer Dick Pope, Roger Corman, Teri Garr, Bill Cobbs, Anouk Aimée, James Earl Jones, Donald Sutherland, Shelley Duvall, and of course, David Lynch.

To end on a lighter note, Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo’s nails were quite something… Her middle finger was manicured with a watch. An actual watch. 

Here is the full list of this year’s Oscar winners:

Best Picture

• Anora (WINNER)

• The Brutalist   

• A Complete Unknown   

• Conclave   

• Dune: Part Two   

• Emilia Pérez   

• I’m Still Here   

• Nickel Boys   

• The Substance   

• Wicked

Best Director

• Sean Baker – Anora (WINNER)

• Brady Corbet – The Brutalist   

• James Mangold – A Complete Unknown   

• Jacques Audiard – Emilia Pérez   

• Coralie Fargeat – The Substance

Best Actor

• Adrien Brody – The Brutalist (WINNER)

• Timothée Chalamet – A Complete Unknown   

• Colman Domingo – Sing Sing   

• Ralph Fiennes – Conclave   

• Sebastian Stan – The Apprentice

Best Actress

• Cynthia Erivo – Wicked   

• Karla Sofía Gascón – Emilia Pérez   

• Mikey Madison – Anora (WINNER)

• Demi Moore – The Substance

• Fernanda Torres – I’m Still Here

Best Supporting Actor

• Yura Borisov – Anora   

• Kieran Culkin – A Real Pain (WINNER) 

• Edward Norton – A Complete Unknown   

• Guy Pearce – The Brutalist   

• Jeremy Strong – The Apprentice

Best Supporting Actress

• Monica Barbaro – A Complete Unknown   

• Ariana Grande – Wicked   

• Felicity Jones – The Brutalist   

• Isabella Rossellini – Conclave 

• Zoe Saldaña – Emilia Pérez (WINNER)

Best Original Screenplay

• Anora (Sean Baker) (WINNER)
• The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold)  
• A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg)  
• September 5 (Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum, Alex David)  
• The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)

Best Adapted Screenplay

• A Complete Unknown (James Mangold and Jay Cocks)  

• Conclave (Peter Straughan) (WINNER) 

• Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi)  

• Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes)  

• Sing Sing (Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, John “Divine G” Whitfield)

Best International Film

• I’m Still Here (Brazil) (WINNER)

• The Girl With The Needle (Denmark)   

• Emilia Pérez (France) 

• The Seed Of The Sacred Fig (Germany)   

• Flow (Latvia)

Best Documentary

• Black Box Diaries   

• No Other Land (WINNER)

• Porcelain War

• Soundtrack To A Coup D’Etat   

• Sugarcane

Best Animated Feature Film

• Flow (WINNER) 

• Inside Out 2   

• Memoir Of A Snail   

• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl   

• The Wild Robot

Best Cinematography

• The Brutalist (WINNER)

• Dune: Part Two  

• Emilia Pérez  

• Maria  

• Nosferatu

Best Sinema Editing

• Anora (WINNER)

• The Brutalist  

• Conclave  

• Emilia Pérez  

• Wicked

Best Production Design

• The Brutalist  

• Conclave  

• Dune: Part Two  

• Nosferatu  

• Wicked (WINNER)

Best Visual Effects

• Alien: Romulus  

• Better Man  

• Dune: Part Two (WINNER)

• Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes  

• Wicked

Best Sound

• A Complete Unknown  

• Dune: Part Two (WINNER)

• Emilia Pérez  

• Wicked  

• The Wild Robot

Best Original Score

• The Brutalist (WINNER)

• Conclave  

• Emilia Pérez  

• Wicked  

• The Wild Robot

Best Original Song

• ‘El Mal’, Emilia Pérez (WINNER)

• ‘The Journey’, The Six Triple Eight  

• ‘Like A Bird’, Sing Sing  

• ‘Mi Camino’, Emilia Pérez  

• ‘Never Too Late’, Elton John: Never Too Late

Best Costume Design

• A Complete Unknown  

• Conclave  

• Gladiator II  

• Nosferatu  

• Wicked (WINNER)

Best Make-up & Hairstyling

• A Different Man  

• Emilia Pérez  

• Nosferatu  

• The Substance (WINNER)

• Wicked

Best Animated Short

• Beautiful Men  

• In The Shadow Of The Cypress (WINNER) 

• Magic Candies  

• Wander To Wonder  

• Yuck!

Best Live Action Short

• A Lien  

• Anuja  

• I’m Not A Robot (WINNER)

• The Last Ranger  

• The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best Documentary Short

• Death By Numbers  

• I Am Ready, Warden  

• Incident  

• Instruments Of A Beating Heart  

• The Only Girl In The Orchestra (WINNER)