UPDATE - Academy Awards: Nomadland wins best picture

ADDS AWARD WINNERS IN OTHER CATEGORIES

By Kasim Ileri

WASHINGTON (AA) - Chloe Zhao's neo-western drama Nomadland won for Best Picture on Sunday night at the Academy Awards.

The 93rd Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, were held at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles.

Directed by Asian-American Chloe Zhao, the film is about a woman in her 60s losing her job and all her property in Nevada amid the 2008 financial crisis. She sets out alone across the American West in her van and joins a caravan of nomads and travels through the western states of the US.

Nomadland was one of eight films selected for best picture. The other contenders included The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, Minari, Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal and the Trial of the Chicago 7.

Mank, the dramatic re-telling of how screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz developed the screenplay for Citizen Kane, led all films with ten nominations.

Zhao became the second woman to receive the best director award in the 93-year history of the Oscars.

Frances McDormand added two more Oscars to her career on Sunday as she was a producer in Nomadland. She also grabbed Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the movie. McDormand, 63, had won the same award in 2018 with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; and in 1997 with Fargo.

Anthony Hopkins was awarded Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance as an older man with dementia in The Father and has become the oldest acting Oscar winner in history. Hopkins, 83, had his first Oscar award in 1992 with The Silence of the Lambs for his role as Hannibal Lecter.

While Daniel Kaluuya was awarded Actor in a Supporting Role with Judas and the Black Messiah, South Korean Yuh-jung Youn bagged Actress in a Supporting Role.

Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller won the Adapted Screenplay award for The Father, and Emerald Fennell was awarded Original Screenplay in Promising Young Woman.

Other award winners are as follows:

Animated Feature Film: Soul (Pete Docter and Dana Murray)

Cinematography: Mank (Erik Messerschmidt)

Costume Design: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (Ann Roth)

Documentary Feature: My Octopus Teacher (Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed and Craig Foster)

Documentary Short Subject: Colette (Anthony Giacchino and Alice Doyard)

Film Editing: Sound Of Metal (Mikkel E. G. Nielsen)

International Feature Film: Another Round, Denmark

Makeup and Hairstyling: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson)

Music Original Score: Soul (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste)

Music Original Song: Fight For You, from Judas and the Black Messiah (Music by H.E.R. and Dernst Emile II; Lyric by H.E.R. and Tiara Thomas)

Production Design: Mank (Production Design: Donald Graham Burt; Set Decoration: Jan Pascale)

Short Film Animated: If Anything Happens I Love You (Will McCormack and Michael Govier)

Short Film Live Action: Two Distant Strangers (Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe)

Sound: Sound Of Metal (Nicolas Becker, Jaime Baksht, Michellee Couttolenc, Carlos Cortés and Phillip Bladh)

Visual Effects: Tenet (Andrew Jackson, David Lee, Andrew Lockley and Scott Fisher)

*Writing by Gozde Bayar and Ovunc Kutlu