The 97th Annual Academy Awards 

Thomas Harper • Mar 3, 2025

I might have been late to the part when making my Oscar predictions for this year’s 97th Academy Awards, but I stuck to all my predictions Sunday night and surprisingly had most of them correct. Here are the highlights, lowlights, and results for this year’s show for the most prestigious award in the film industry.

Predictions:

Best Picture: Anora

Actor in a Leading Role: Adrien Brody

Actress in a Leading Role: Mikey Madison

Directing: Brady Corbet

Actor in a Supporting Role: Kieran Culkin

Actress in a Supporting Role: Zoe Saldana

Writing (Original Screenplay): The Brutalist

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Conclave

Music (Original Score): The Brutalist

International Feature Film: Emilia Perez

Animated Feature Film: Flow

Cinematography: The Brutalist

Sound: Dune: Part Two

Costume Design: Wicked

Visual Effects: Dune: Part Two

Production Design: Wicked

Makeup and Hairstyling: The Substance

Film Editing: Dune: Part Two

Results:

Best Picture: Anora

Actor in a Leading Role: Adrien Brody

Actress in a Leading Role: Mikey Madison

Directing: Sean Baker

Actor in a Supporting Role: Kieran Culkin

Actress in a Supporting Role: Zoe Saldana

Writing (Original Screenplay): Anora

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Conclave

Music (Original Score): The Brutalist

International Feature Film: Emilia Perez

Animated Feature Film: Flow

Cinematography: The Brutalist

Sound: Dune: Part Two

Costume Design: Wicked

Visual Effects: Dune: Part Two

Production Design: Wicked

Makeup and Hairstyling: The Substance

Film Editing: Anora

The awards given out for the night were fairly  spread out besides the close sweep the independent film Anora was able to achieve. The film was nominated for six categories and won five Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Directing. Director, writer, and Editor, Sean Baker was able to acquire all Oscars he was nominated for, tying Walt Disney for most Oscars in one night. Anora had the best night despite being in the middle of the pack for nominations. So what happened to the rest of these films?

The film with the most nominations, Emilia Perez, only brought home two awards out of the potential thirteen. Though many expected Emilia Perez to win Actress in a Supporting Role and Original Song, the film choked due to backlash concerning the films portrayal of latin culture as well as just being a poorly executed film. The Academy may have been intimidated by audience opinion and decided to give awards to more deserving films. 

Other expected films to have more awards included The Brutalist, Conclave, and A Complete Unknown. The beautiful film that is The Brutalist got an expected three wins, taking technical awards as well as Adren Brody winning Actor in a Leading role. This is Brody's second win in this category, even though both his roles were quite similar. Brody’s win was received very poorly despite him being the favorite by winning a Golden Globe and BAFTA award for the role. He had the longest acceptance speech in Academy history, almost breaking six minutes, in which he demanded for the concluding music to stop so he can continue to repeat himself of graciousness and speaking out against hate and racism. Not only did people think his speech was terrible, but many thought he wasn’t even deserving of the award. Many impressive performances from actors such as Timothee Chalemet and Ralph Fiennes seemed to maybe be more deserving of the award only after Brody had an Oscar in hand. 

These actors in leading roles unfortunate loss spoke for the rest of their film’s awards. Out of films like Conclave, Sing Sing, A Complete Unknown, and Nosferatu, only Conclave won one Oscar for Adapted Screenplay. To be fair, it is fairly hard to match category wins with most nominated films, especially when you have incredible films like Anora that don’t specialise in technical categories giving the film less nominations. But I do in fact think the Academy got everything mostly right. The mediocre Emilia Perez getting snubbed was the right choice. Latvia getting their first Oscar for Flow was nice to see. Mikey Madison totally deserved an Oscar over Demi Moore and it broke the stream of “Legacy Awards” being given out. And Timothee Chalemet’s potential only grows after his loss. Overall, it was a great show, and it turns out Conan O’Brien just may be the best award show host.