The 2025 Oscars: Heavy on speeches, light on politics, and one big winner

At Sunday night’s Oscars, there was one big winner, a lot of heartfelt speeches, and not much politics.

Here are eight things to know:

A lot of films were recognized, but it was Anora‘s night.

Director Sean Baker’s previous films, including Tangerine and The Florida Project, have been indie darlings, but they didn’t win the biggest awards. Anora, the story of a sex worker who marries a former client and gets mixed up with some Russian oligarchs, became his breakout on the Oscar stage. Baker won the award for best original screenplay, then one for editing, and then one for best director. Mikey Madison won best actress, then the movie capped off the night with the win that by then seemed inevitable: best picture. Because Baker is a producer, that best picture win meant he personally won four Oscars in one night, which ties him with a fairly well-known filmmaker named Walt Disney. (Bong Joon-ho accepted four for Parasite, but one was for best international feature film, which is officially given to the entire film, not the director.)

With that said, eight out of 10 of the best picture nominees – all but A Complete Unknown and Nickel Boys – went home with something.

There was only one real surprise.

Most of the races went as expected: Kieran Culkin as best supporting actor for A Real Pain, and Zoe Saldaña as best supporting actress for Emilia Pérez, Adrien Brody as best actor for The Brutalist – all these folks had done a lot of award-winning leading up to Sunday night. The one surprise came late in the evening when Mikey Madison won best actress for Anora over Demi Moore. It’s a modest surprise, given that Madison had actually been an early favorite in the category. But Moore had put together a heck of a run through the precursor awards for her turn in The Substance, and she was the favorite. In the end, though, Madison got the big win.

People talked a lot – but rarely about politics.

The telecast started at 7 p.m. Eastern, which is on the early side. That left time for it to run long without getting horrifyingly late. And that’s what happened. The ceremony felt loose and personal, leaving more room than there is in most years for presenters and winners to talk. And they did talk – about their work, about other people’s work, and about their appreciation for their craft. (Maybe most notably Adrien Brody, who filibustered in an unintentional salute to the 3.5-hour running time of The Brutalist.) But there was not much mention of politics, despite politics being front and center in the minds of so many. Daryl Hannah, presenting, said “Slava Ukraini,” but most winners did not take the opportunity to speak explicitly to the domestic or international political moment – with a big exception.

The winner for best documentary feature still has no U.S. distribution.

In January, Justin Chang wrote that No Other Land “brings us into Masafer Yatta, a community of Palestinian villages in the Israeli-occupied southern West Bank, which is being bulldozed by the Israeli military to make room for a tank training ground.” He also said the film, made by a team of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, was “the most powerful nonfiction film [he] saw in 2024.” Then, as now, it lacked U.S. distribution; as of mid-February, the filmmakers were self-distributing to a few movie theaters. The filmmakers spoke powerfully from the Oscar stage about not only the destruction depicted in the film, but also their frustration with U.S. foreign policy. It is now almost certainly the most decorated film of last year not to be widely available in the United States.

Rarely does a movie go through as much of a change in fortunes as Emilia Pérez.

The Netflix story of a transgender cartel boss once looked to be on track to deliver the streamer its first best picture win. It received a stunning 13 Oscar nominations, despite reviews and reactions that never quite matched the reception the film received at Cannes. But then, lead actress Karla Sofia Gascón saw her chances scrambled after a scandal erupted over derogatory comments she’d made online several years ago about Islam, China and other topics.

Zoe Saldaña’s history in Hollywood goes back more than 20 years and includes time spent in the Star Trek universe, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and in Crossroads with Britney Spears. That experience may be how she weathered the negative publicity and won an Oscar, as did the original song, “El Mal.” But the movie itself largely vanished from the best picture conversation, and Gascón from the best actress race, where she was the first openly transgender performer ever nominated in any acting category.

Nobody missed the songs.

The ceremony this year did without the usual performances of the best original song nominees. Instead, there was a killer opening sequence featuring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo singing a medley of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow,” “Home” (from The Wizˆ), and (of course) “Defying Gravity.” There were also some old-school Oscar numbers: a James Bond tribute featured singers Lisa, Doja Cat, and Raye doing some of the best-known Bond themes, while Queen Latifah stepped out to sing “Ease On Down The Road” in honor of Quincy Jones. In a year when the original song nominees were a bit of a “ragtag crop” (there was no “I’m Just Ken” or “What Was I Made For?”, no “Naatu Naatu” or “Husavik”), it was wise not to rely on them to enliven the ceremony.

Hosting is still very hard; Conan was up to it.

Conan O’Brien didn’t have the smoothest start, although following the Erivo/Grande opening would have been difficult for anybody. He got his feet under him quickly, and by the time he got to his own very silly opening number (called, sarcastically, “I Won’t Waste Time”), he was turning into the comfortably weird Conan many of us know. A gag featuring a Dune sandworm playing musical instruments had the same absurd, bad-talent-show quality that his late-night show always did – in the best way. He also commented later in the evening that perhaps people liked Anora because they wanted to see “someone stand up to a powerful Russian,” which was probably the closest thing we saw to a straight-up Donald Trump joke.

The structure left a little more time to speak from the heart.

This year’s approach to some of the major categories was to have the presenters speak personally about each nominee. That could be a dull disaster, but it got off to a great start with Robert Downey, Jr. speaking earnestly about his admiration for Jeremy Strong and the other supporting actor nominees. And they didn’t only use this format for actors. They did it for the costume designers, and they did it for the cinematographers as well. When was the last time the Oscars gave us actors speaking from the heart about their appreciation of the cinematographers in their nominated movies?

The evening was effusive with earnestness, whether it was these presentations, Andrew Garfield telling Goldie Hawn how much his mother loved her work, or Zoe Saldaña’s emotional speech about what it meant to her to win an Oscar for speaking and singing in Spanish.

The whole ceremony always feels long, and it remains self-indulgent. But all other things being equal, it goes down easier when people have enough room to be grateful and compliment one another.