13 h. ago Anora has swept the Oscars. I can’t help feeling that shouldn’t have happened | Catherine Shoard

Sean Baker’s film is muddled, hollow at the middle and about the fifth least vital of the best picture lineupHow Anora swept the Oscars – and the complete list of winnersThe red carpet and Oscars ceremony – in picturesIt is hard to imagine a more charming Oscar winner than Sean Baker. The director – and writer, editor and producer – of Anora was wonderfully persuasive and gracious and fluent at the Academy Awards. He was funny picking up best editing, and then he was sweet accepting the screenwriter prize.When it came to the directing gong, he was downright godlike: the podium his soapbox, superbly leveraged for a gang-busting call to arms about the importance of cinema and the need for people to support bricks and mortar venues. Continue reading...

Politics

14 h. ago The Oscars were an exhilarating triumph for Anora and newly minted star Mikey Madison

Political metaphors were the dark undercurrent in this year’s crop, from Anora’s toxic masculinity to the revolutionary defiance of I’m Still HereSo, as Conan O’Brien pointed out, the Oscars went to a film about someone standing up to a Russian, and maybe recent events mean we have to probe its political metaphor even further. Sean Baker’s cacophonous, crazy non-love story Anora won five Academy Awards including best actress for that rather amazing and newly born star Mikey Madison, playing the tough, smart, beautiful New York lap dancer who gets a Vegas quickie marriage to the spoilt and pusillanimous son of a Russian oligarch and then has to stand up to his parents. Madison embodies Anora’s complex courage: not exactly romantic, not exactly in love, but certainly believing in the wedding contract, in her own status as a legally married woman and in the possibility of happiness which is no more remote for her than for anyone else. She is the thoroughly modern, thoroughly 21st-centu...

Politics

15 h. ago Anora wins Best Picture Oscar as 2025's biggest winner of the night

Sean Baker's Anora took home the Best Picture award at the 97th Academy Awards, marking a groundbreaking win for independent cinema...

Politics

16 h. ago Oscars 2025: Anora's Sean Baker issues 'battle cry' to save cinemas as he wins Best Director

Sean Baker picked up his third prize of the night for 'Anora', after wins for Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing, to take the statuette ahead of Brady Corbet, James Mangold, Jacques Audiard and Coralie Fargeat

Events

16 h. ago Anora sweeps the Oscars as Mikey Madison named best actress and Adrien Brody wins for The Brutalist

Sean Baker’s film picked up five awards including best picture while Israel-Palestine documentary No Other Land also gets major winOscars 2025 — follow live Academy Awards updatesSee complete list of winners and photos from the red carpetLow-budget comedy Anora has triumphed at this year’s Oscars winning five Oscars, including best picture and best actress while Adrien Brody took home best actor.Anora, which follows Mikey Madison’s sex worker who gets married to the son of a Russian oligarch, premiered at the Cannes film festival last year and has become the fourth Palme d’Or winner to be named best picture. Continue reading...

Politics

16 h. ago Anora dominates the Oscars as Mikey Madison named best actress and Adrien Brody wins for The Brutalist

Sean Baker’s film picks up five awards including best picture while Israel-Palestine documentary No Other Land also gets major win• Oscars 2025 – follow live Academy Awards updates• Complete list of winners and photos from the red carpetLow-budget comedy Anora has triumphed at this year’s Oscars winning five Oscars, including best picture and best actress while Adrien Brody took home best actor.Anora, which follows Mikey Madison’s sex worker who gets married to the son of a Russian oligarch, premiered at the Cannes film festival last year and has become the fourth Palme d’Or winner to be named best picture. Continue reading...

Politics

16 h. ago Anora: Why Sean Baker’s sad and sexy glitter bomb of a film was the right Best Picture winner

The awards season staple features a star-making performance from 25-year-old Mikey Madison – who took home Best Actress at Sunday’s Oscars – and a tone that oscillates between slapstick, romcom and bleak drama, writes Annabel Nugent

Events

16 h. ago Sean Baker wins best director Oscar for ‘Anora,’ his 3rd of the night

Sean Baker has won best director at the Oscars for “Anora,” the story of a Brooklyn exotic dancer who marries the impetuous son of a Russian oligarch

Politics

19 h. ago Oscars 2025 live updates: Kieran Culkin and Sean Baker’s Anora notch early Academy Award wins

Conan O’Brien is hosting the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Conclave, Anora and Wicked have picked up awards so far. Join us for full coverage• The complete list of winners• The red carpet – in picturesAnd now a special live update from the Guardian’s Xan Brooks at the Dolby theatre in Hollywood First trip to the Oscars. Impossibly glamorous arrival. Non-celebrity guests, I discover, access the Dolby theatre by walking around the police cordons, across a filling station forecourt and past a shuttered bowling alley to the theatre doors. This is perhaps what’s known unofficially as the Karla Sofía Gascón Entrance. But I’m now safely inside and have been handed a spring roll to eat. Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago Anora: Why Sean Baker’s sad and sexy glitter bomb of a film deserves to win the Oscar for Best Picture

The awards season staple features a star-making performance from 25-year-old Mikey Madison and a tone that oscillates between slapstick, romcom and bleak drama – and it’d be a worthy winner on Oscar night, writes Annabel Nugent

Events