There hasn’t been a clear favorite for the Best Picture Oscar all season. Even as the 97th Academy Awards unfolded, it wasn’t initially obvious who would take home the top prize. Several of the bigger contenders took home multiple prizes. The Brutalist won for Best Cinematography and Best Original Score, as well as Best Actor for Adrien Brody. Emilia Perez won Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldana and Best Original Song. Wicked won Best Costume Design and Best Production Design. Even Dune: Part Two took home prizes for Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.
But little by little, you began to notice that Anora was winning prize after prize — and it was winning nearly all of the major awards. The film’s writer/director/editor, Sean Baker, won three prizes. And he won awards for each of those roles: Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Editor.
Then the film’s star, Mikey Madison, won Best Actress in perhaps the biggest upset at this year’s Oscars, defeating Demi Moore in The Substance — who had previously beaten her for the same prize at this year’s Golden Globes. And then, when Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal opened the Best Picture envelope on the stage of the Dolby Theatre, the card they pulled from the envelope read Anora too.
In doing so, that gave Baker an honor that has never happened before in the history of movies: He is the first filmmaker to win four Oscars for his work on a single film.
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Anora is the second Best Picture winner in six years for indie distributor Neon, who previously released 2019’s Best Picture champ, Parasite. Last year’s Best Picture winner was Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer.
You can read the full list of winners at this year’s Academy Awards here. You can read ScreenCrush’s review of Anora here, and if you want to see where it landed on our own list of the best movies of 2024, you can read that here.
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