On 2 March 2025, at the 97th Academy Awards, Anora, Sean Baker’s scrappy New York comedy-drama, was crowned Best Picture, the final act of one of the most unlikely awards-season runs in modern Hollywood memory. Baker also won Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing, and Mikey Madison took Best Actress.
Made for roughly $6 million, Anora had beaten a field of heavily backed rivals, including The Brutalist and Conclave, and its sweep was a vindication for the independent film world at a moment when such films were struggling to find audiences. Baker, a filmmaker who had spent twenty years documenting marginalised America, gave an emotional acceptance speech that invoked the dreams that drive people to make movies.
It was also a ceremony defined by the political moment: presenters and winners returned, more overtly than in recent years, to the defence of cinema as a space for truth-telling, and the mood was of an industry gathering itself in the face of technological and political disruption. For a small movie from the margins, taking the biggest prize in film was a statement about what audiences, and voters, still wanted.