Oscars 2025: ‘Anora’ wins ‘Best Original Screenplay’
Anora has won the Oscar for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ at the 97th Academy Awards, beating fellow nominees A Real Pain, The Brutalist, September 5, and The Substance.
Director Sean Baker picked up the award, which represents just one of the four categories for which he is nominated this year.
Baker began his acceptance speech thanking the Academy and his cast, including ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nominee Yura Borisov and ‘Best Actress’ nominee Mikey Madison, saying, “To my incredible cast… you elevated everything I wrote.”
He finished by expressing his gratitude to the people who have inspired so many of his films, including Anora: “I want to thank the sex worker community. They have shared their stories and their lives with me over the years. With the deepest respect, I share this with you.”
The film stars Mikey Madison as the titular Anora, an exotic dancer from Brooklyn who marries the young son of a Russian oligarch after a two-week romance. It has been a critical darling for nearly a year since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May last year.
This is Baker’s first nomination for a screenwriting Oscar after spending decades toiling away as an indie auteur. His other films, including 2015’s Tangerine, which was shot on iPhones, and 2017’s The Florida Project, have also been critically successful, though Anora marked a watershed moment in his career when mainstream Hollywood recognised him.
Baker’s screenplay was previously awarded by the Writers Guild of America and at the Indie Spirit Awards, both of which are key precursors to the Oscars. It faced steep competition from Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, which took home the screenplay prize at the Baftas.
Anora is nominated for six Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Actress’ for Madison, and ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for Yura Borisov.
In Far Out’s review of the film, Emily Ruuskanen wrote: “Baker has created a shattering odyssey of love in a modern world, a film that feels more urgent than his others in the way he chooses to end it, exposing a society that has been corrupted by materialism and our misogynistic dating standards. There is no dream sequence or faint optimism, just a woman who has been punished for being briefly hopeful for a fairy-tale ending, longing for stability and a human love story in a heartless world.”
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