The 96th Academy Awards were held on March 10 EST (11 IST) at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood. The Oscars, the gold standard in movie making, honor the best films of the year and the filmmakers behind them. A victory can turn a filmmaker into a legend, which is considered the highest achievement in cinema. The Oscars are awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a prestigious group that votes for their favorite movies each year.
Jimmy Kimmel returned as the host for the fourth time and brought a few laughs to the star-studded evening. The awards were televised live across the globe. Here is the complete list of winners:
Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed ‘Oppenheimer’ won the biggest prize of the night, Best Film. The sprawling historical drama based on the father of the nuclear bomb was nominated in 13 categories and passed with seven significant awards, including Best Actor for Cillian Murphy. Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein-riff ‘Poor Things’ won 4 awards, winning Best Actress for Emma Stone and snapping up crafts wins for costume design, production design, makeup, and hairstyling. Martin Scorsese’s dark crime drama ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ won 3 awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Bradley Cooper.
In the adapted screenplay category, where some expected Greta Gerwig to win for ‘Barbie,’ the award went to Cord Jefferson for his feature debut ‘American Fiction.’ Taking to the stage, he said, “If you think making a $200 million film is risky, try making 20 $10 million films. That’s a real risk.”
The evening also featured a few political moments, including the winner of Best Short Documentary. The harrowing Ukrainian film 20 Days in Mariupol won for its first-person account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, directed by Mstyslav Chernov and co-directed by Michelle Mizner and Raney Aronson-Rath. The doc also won the Oscar for Best Editing.
The other big winners were Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki’s animated film ‘The Boy and the Heron,’ which won the Best Animated Feature award. Jonathan Glazer and John Krasinski’s The Zone of Interest won the Best Foreign Language Film. In contrast, the coveted Best Animated Short went to animators Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers for their work on ‘King Kong vs. Godzilla.’ Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell won the award for Best Original Song for their song ‘What Was I Made For?’ from the film Barbie. Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers also won the award for Best Animated Short.
