LOS ANGELES — The little film about a Brooklyn sex worker ran the table on Sunday night. “Anora”, Sean Baker’s screwball tragedy about a dancer who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress for its 25-year-old star Mikey Madison.
Made for six million dollars — a rounding error by Oscar standards — “Anora” is among the cheapest Best Picture winners in the modern era. Baker, who also won for editing and for the screenplay, used his four trips to the stage to plead for the survival of cinemas, asking filmmakers to keep making films for the big screen.
Madison’s win over the favourite, Demi Moore of “The Substance”, was the night’s biggest surprise; Adrien Brody took his second Best Actor award, for “The Brutalist”, more than two decades after his first. The ceremony, hosted by Conan O’Brien, was the first since the January wildfires that devastated Los Angeles, and it paused to honour the city’s firefighters.
The result completes a clean sweep: “Anora” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last May and never relinquished its front-runner status through the season, despite its explicit subject matter — for years considered disqualifying at the Academy.
Hollywood, in other words, has changed its taste. A decade ago, the Academy was criticised for rewarding safe, respectable cinema. On Sunday it gave its top prize to an independent film about sex work, made without a studio, by a director who shoots on the streets. The margins of the industry have become its centre.
Media-Society.com is a press network association based in Spain, founded in 2020. More at www.media-society.com.
