Anora takes home top honors at 2025 Oscars

By Darren Lyn

HOUSTON, US (AA) - Anora took home the biggest award of the night at the 2025 Academy Awards on Sunday, winning Best Picture, and also had bragging rights for Best Actress, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing Oscars.

Mikey Madison won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in the romantic comedy-drama. The film follows the beleaguered marriage between Madison's character, Anora (Ani), a sex worker living in a Russian-American neighborhood in New York, and her husband who is the son of a Russian oligarch.

Sean Baker took home the Best Director Academy Award for Anora.

Adrian Brody won the Oscar for Best Actor in the 1940s and 1950s period drama The Brutalist. Brody plays a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor who immigrates to the US, where he struggles to achieve the American dream, until a wealthy client changes his life.

The Brutalist also won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Original Score.

Kieran Culkin won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the comedy-drama A Real Pain. Culkin plays Benji, a mismatched cousin to the film's creator and lead actor Jesse Eisenberg, who goes on a Jewish heritage tour through Poland to learn about their family history in honor of their late grandmother.

Zoe Saldana became the first American of Dominican descent to win an Oscar, as she took home the golden statuette for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Emilia Perez. She plays Rita Castro, a down-on-her-luck lawyer who is hired by a Mexican drug lord to help facilitate gender-affirming surgery. That drug lord becomes Emilia Perez, played by Best Actress nominee, Karla Sofia Gascon, who became the first openly transgender actor nominated for an Academy Award.

"My grandmother came to this country in 1961. I am a proud child of immigrant parents, with dreams and dignity and hard-working hands," said Saldana in her acceptance speech. "I am the first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award, and I know I will not be the last."

Emilia Perez also won the Best Original Song Oscar for El Mal, and Saldana beat out fan-favorite Ariana Grande who was also up for the Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Galinda, the good witch, in the Boadway-adapted musical Wicked.

Wicked did, however, pick up Academy Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design.

Conclave won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The Substance won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

Dune: Part Two took home Oscars for Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.

No Other Land won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film was produced by a Palestinian-Israeli collective and follows the story of a Palestinian activist who befriends an Israeli journalist to help him in his plight for justice during the ongoing conflict in the region.

There was some political turmoil during the Best Film Editing presentation as actress Daryl Hannah said "Slava Ukraini" which means "Glory to Ukraine."

While Hannah's comment received applause from the audience, critics took to social media to call her out for what they called unnecessary politicization of the Oscars.