Oscars 2026: ‘One Battle After Another’ wins ‘Best Picture’
Capping off a stellar night for both himself and his film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another has won the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’.
On the night, the movie was up against a host of other impressive nominees, including: Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia; Josh Safdie’s Timothée Chalamet-fronted epic Marty Supreme; Joseph Kosinski’s F1; Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet; Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent; Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value; Ryan Coogler’s Sinners; Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams; and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
The film is loosely based on the novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob, a former revolutionary who was part of the far-left group French 75. He is thrust back into action to save his daughter, Willa (played by Chase Infiniti).
On the night, the thriller was up for a total of 13 awards, and it fared best in the major categories, with Anderson winning ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’, with Sean Penn named ‘Best Supporting Actor’.
In a four-and-a-half-star review of One Battle After Another, Far Out wrote: “Revitalising old stars and launching new ones, it does it all there too, as every single element of this movie, every person and every detail, feels masterful.”
Adding, “It’s a Hollywood romp that has been through the rigours of arthouse attention to detail and intention to stir.”
One Battle After Another also won the Golden Globe for ‘Best Picture – Comedy or Musical’, where Anderson also took home the prize for ‘Best Director’, so it was always considered the favourite heading into the Oscars, when the Globes are usually a pretty good indicator of how things will go.
The biggest talking point of the 98th Oscars was the head-to-head between One Battle Another and Sinners, and while Coogler’s film fared very well, Anderson’s movie took the two most prestigious prizes of the night.
To put the exclamation point on the biggest night of his career, the filmmaker paid tribute to his cast and crew before signing off with a flourish: “Let’s have a martini!”
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