Hollywood has chosen: Paul Thomas Anderson's “A Battle After Another” was crowned by the 10,000-plus members of the Academy as the best film of 2025 at the end of a ceremony that saw a duel to the finish with Ryan Coogler's “Sinners.”
The dramatic comedy about former revolutionaries grappling with the consequences of their past won a total of six statuettes , including for best director: the first Oscar for the director of “Magnolia”, “Licorice Pizza” and “Phantom Thread” after 11 nominations , for best supporting actor ( Sean Penn, who skipped the ceremony, having directed, it is said, in Ukraine ), best adapted screenplay (inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”), best editing and, for the first time in the history of the Oscars, best casting.
After having won almost all the main awards of the season - including Golden Globe, Bafta, directors and producers - Anderson was the favourite on the eve even if, on the nominations front (13) he had been beaten by the 16 of "Sinners" , the saga about vampires and racism in the segregated South written and directed by Coogler who won for the original screenplay, the best leading actor (Michael B. Jordan surprised Timothee Chalamet in the last minute) , the soundtrack by the Swedish Ludwig Gorannson and the photography by Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the first woman, and the first woman of colour, to win the Oscar in a historically male sector.
The Best Actress award was no surprise: it went to Irish actress Jessie Buckley for "Hamnet," while Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for the horror film "Weapons." The Oscar for Best Original Song, "Golden" by K-Pop Demon Hunters, was also a given. In an industry undergoing profound transformation, both "The Battle After the Battle" ($209 million at the worldwide box office) and "Sinners" ($370 million) were blockbusters released by Warner Bros. Studios at the center of Paramount Skydance's $111 billion takeover : they brought audiences to theaters by capturing the climate of the time, amid political polarization, radicalism, and new culture wars over identity.
On the night at the Dolby, however, aside from a few light-hearted jokes, politics remained on the sidelines. Host Conan O'Brien joked about the threat of artificial intelligence in Hollywood, claiming to be "the last human host of the Academy Awards," and addressed the Epstein case with bated breath: "No British actors nominated, it's the first time since 2012. But they arrest their pedophiles." Italy, which was left out after the flop of "Familia," received a consolation prize in the form of Valentina Merli, co-producer of the live-action short "Two People Exchanging Saliva." In an edition that saw nominees from 31 countries, there was anticipation for the nine nominations for Joachim Trier's Norwegian film "Sentimental Value," which won only for Best International Feature Film.
Iranian cinema, which had Jafar Panahi (“A Simple Accident”) and the documentary “Scratching the Rock” in the running, also came away empty-handed. With Javier Bardem taking the stage with the slogan “Free Palestine,” it was the team behind the award-winning documentary “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” who forcefully denounced governments that “kill their citizens in the streets.” Speaking backstage after the ceremony, director David Borenstein said that “working with a team of Russians on this film, as an American, I was constantly trying to compare the situation in the United States with that in Russia . Many of my Russian colleagues and friends told me that it’s not the same situation. It’s actually happening faster in America than it was in Russia. Trump is moving much faster than Putin did in his early years.”
(Unioneonline)
