On the night of March 2nd, or the morning of March 3rd for us Australians, the 97th Academy Awards took place. For what was an awards race plagued by controversy, the culmination of so much discord became what was one of the most unabashedly positive Oscars ceremonies in recent memory. Winners and losers signalled a shift in attitudes from The Academy, one that celebrates ingenuity and the freedom of the creative spirit over the endless corporatization of the cinematic medium.
On the night of March 2nd, or the morning of March 3rd for us Australians, the 97th Academy Awards took place. For what was an awards race plagued by controversy, the culmination of so much discord became what was one of the most unabashedly positive Oscars ceremonies in recent memory. Winners and losers signalled a shift in attitudes from The Academy, one that celebrates ingenuity and the freedom of the creative spirit over the endless corporatization of the cinematic medium.
The big winner of the night was Anora, Sean Baker’s latest entry into his canon of films depicting the lives of sex workers in modern America. This is the first time Baker himself has been recognised by The Academy, his 2017 work The Florida Project receiving a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Willem Dafoe. The auteur director walked away with a record four Oscars, winning for Best Editing, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. This marks only the second time an individual received four awards in a single ceremony, the first being Walt Disney in 1954. This unprecedented level of recognition for a writer/director indicates that The Academy has a growing appetite for the intricacies of an auteur, which also manifested in Christopher Nolan’s Best Director win last year.
Each of Baker’s four speeches at the 2025 Oscars spoke to a pressing issue facing independent filmmakers. The director, acting as a singular, unique voice, championed the spirit of low-budget cinema. His landmark victories exist in direct opposition to the increasing presence and popularity of artless film, Baker rejecting the capitalistic focus of the contemporary studio system. When pairing this notion with Sean Baker’s championing of the theatrical experience, it appears that both his and Anora’s successes are indicative of a regenerative hunger for cinematic spectacles, films that beg to be watched on the big screen.
Mikey Madison’s surprise Best Actress win for Anora was one of the brightest moments in the night, signalling a shift in how the industry perceives the art of acting and the role of an ingénue. Madison was primarily competing against Demi Moore in The Substance and Fernanda Torres in I’m Still Here, two other exceptional performances that would have made for great winners in this category. What’s exciting about Madison’s win, however, is that it’s been a decade since a newcomer has won the Best Actress trophy.
She represents a new generation of actors, a compensatory win to make up for Austin Butler’s loss in 2023, Timothee Chalamet’s in both 2018 and 2025, and, perhaps most regrettably, all of Saoirse Ronan’s. Younger actors struggle to receive serious recognition from The Academy, often cast aside in favour of other contenders with better career narratives. The likes of Meryl Steep, Viola Davis and Frances McDormand were once themselves the renegade ingénue, and with the proper guidance, who can say what heights Madison and her peers will be able to reach.The amount of time spent in the acting industry should not be correlated with recognition, and Madison beating out Moore is hopefully indicative of a shift within the industry that recognises skill rather than longevity. The now Oscar-winning actress has no social media presence, harkening back to the days of old Hollywood, where stars became profitable and were rewarded based simply on the mass consumption of their work and the broad recognition of their skill.
Other notable winners include the little-indie-that-could Flow beating The Wild Robot for Animated Feature, The Brutalist tying up Best Actor, Score and Cinematography, and Conclave, Wicked and A Real Pain succeeding in categories that were a forgone conclusion long before the night of the ceremony. Besides Madison’s win, nothing about the winners this year were especially surprising, but each success felt more than warranted.
The Substance, while walking away with only one award in Makeup & Hairstyling, hopes to have broken The Academy’s taboo for horror cinema, the experimental body horror becoming the kind of contender we simply have not seen before, the likes of which bode incredibly well for the future of populist cinema.
None of this is to mention Emilia Perez, however, the thirteen-time-nominee that became the villain of this year’s awards season. It went home with two awards at the ceremony, Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldana and Best Original Song, neither of which are ultimately that objectionable. Despite the tiredness of career narratives, if anyone deserves to have one it should be Saldana, whose storied filmography grosses over $14 billion. Her competitors will have other opportunities, especially Ariana Grande, with emotionally loaded Wicked: For Good releasing in cinemas this November, and newcomer Monica Barbaro just getting started in her career. To think that Emilia Perez might have won Best Picture if not for Karla Sofia Gascon’s Twitter tirade is the most important thing to remember when criticizing Saldana’s win, so it’s important to take what we can get.
The show in it of itself was also something of a welcome increase in quality, defined by its earnest appreciation of its nominees and reflections on Hollywood history. The presentation of the technical categories seemed considerably more put together than recent years, each award presented alongside some kind of example of the nominees’ work. In the Sound, Visual Effects, and Editing categories, for instance, clips showcasing the prowess of the nominees accompanied their presentation. Meanwhile, the costume and cinematography categories saw the stars of each nominated work come onstage and describe the specificities of the crafts from their respective film. Not often are these less flashy categories prescribed with such attention, but it was a very welcome addition to the ceremony that clearly demonstrated why each work deserved recognition.
Also benefiting from creative changes to the ceremony were the Lead Acting categories, which saw the return of the colloquially known “Oscar Clips”, featuring impressive snippets of each performance before the announcement of the winner. Inexplicably, the supporting performances did not receive such treatment, instead presenters simply went down the line and complimented each nominee before handing out the prize. This format was far less effective than the presentation of the lead categories, begging the question why the categories were presented so differently.
Other segments of the ceremony featured nominees Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo honouring the legacy of The Wizard of Oz with a musical medley and The Substance’s Margaret Qualley performing a Bond-inspired dance routine to commemorate the music of the franchise. Both the presentation of award categories and the special tributes to film’s history represented an earnest appreciation for the craft of film, something which has been notably absent from previous ceremonies. This year’s awards felt like a true celebration of cinema at its best, which is exactly what the Academy Awards are designed to be.
This year’s Academy Awards proved that independent cinema is alive and well, and promised new and exciting horizons for what might come in the future. Now that a 3-hour biopic about a war figure and a satirical comedy about a sex worker married to a Russian oligarch’s son have won Best Picture in two consecutive years, who’s to say what new frontiers will be uncovered in the ceremonies to come. The success of Anora, The Substance, and The Brutalist are glowingly positive indicators, showing us all that the fighting spirit of the artist will persist despite all odds.