I'm So Happy Anora Won Best Picture - And Here's How It Did It

Anora just won Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards, winning a total of 5 Oscars out of its six nominations. Anora bested top contenders such as The Brutalist, Conclave, and A Complete Unknown to become the official 2025 Best Picture winner. Anora went into Oscars night with strong chances of taking home the top prize after gaining momentum following multiple wins, including Best Picture at the Critics’ Choice Awards, and Best Feature, Director, and Actress at the recent Independent Spirit Awards.

In what was the biggest surprise of the night, Mikey Madison bested frontrunner Demi Moore to take home her first Best Actress Oscar for her celebrated role as the titular protagonist in Anora. This comes as one of the most shocking moments of the 2025 Oscars as Moore seemingly had the Best Actress category locked following her Golden Globes and SAG Award wins. While several films could have taken home Best Picture, many agree that the Academy made the right choice with Anora at the 2025 Oscars.

Catch up on all of Screen Rant’s Oscars coverage and check out the complete list of 2025 Oscars winners.

How Anora Won Best Picture At The 2025 Oscars

The Palmd d’Or winner gained momentum in Oscars precursor ceremonies

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Anora was projected to be a contender at the 2025 Academy Awards since it won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival in May 2024. That coveted prize has also led to only a small number of Best Picture winners, such as 2019’s Parasite. In fact, only three other Palme d’Or winners besides Anora have ever gone on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, including The Lost Weekend (1946) and Marty (1955). Following its breakout success at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Anora was released in theaters on October 18, 2024.

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Critics and audiences praise Anora for its equally touching and humorous tones, earning the Best Picture winner a 93% critic score and 89% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Madison quickly emerged as one of the surefire Best Actress nominations and even Russian actor Yura Borisov earned multiple nominations in the Supporting Actor category, which Kieran Culkin ultimately swept.

The true spark behind Anora’s success comes from writer, director, and editor Sean Baker, whose particular brand of independent filmmaking, as seen in his previous Oscar-nominated work The Florida Project and the completely-shot-on-iPhone Tangerine, reaches new heights in his Best Picture winner. Both of these Baker films also center on characters who are sex workers, which is also the focal point of Anora. Madison joins an esteemed list of Oscar winners who played sex workers, which includes Charlize Theron (Monster), Jane Fonda (Klute), and Elizabeth Taylor (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?).

All Of Anora’s Academy Award Wins Explained

Baker Won Individual Awards For Editing, Writing & Directing

Sean Baker pulled off a rare feat at the 2025 Academy Awards, winning individual honors for Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture (he also was a producer on Anora). The only Oscar that Anora won that Baker didn’t claim was Madison’s Best Actress. Borisov’s loss in the Best Supporting Actor category was the Best Picture winner’s only defeat of the night.

Best Film Editing

Baker has edited nearly all of the feature films that he has directed, dating back to his feature film debut Four Letter Words in 2000. This is quite rare for modern-day directors who typically work with an editor to achieve the final cut. Baker joins Best Picture-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen as the editor of his Best Picture-winning film (No Country for Old Men). The Coen Brothers edit their films and credit themselves as Roderick Jaynes.

Best Original Screenplay

Baker also writes nearly all of his own original screenplays for the films he directs. Baker was up against some strong candidates for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, which doesn’t always go to the biggest winners of the night. While Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain had a real chance of taking home the prize, the Academy went with Baker for Anora’s great dialogue, characters, settings, and plot.

Best Director

At one point during the 2025 Oscars campaign trail, The Brutalist’s Brady Corbet appeared to emerge as the frontrunner for Best Director, particularly due to the impressive quality of the film that was shot on classic VistaVison cameras using Kodak 35mm film. The remarkable visual elements were instead honored to Lol Crawley’s win for Best Cinematography. While Corbet directed Adrian Brody’s Oscar-winning performance, Baker also directed Madison to her stunning Oscar win.

Best Actress

While the other categories that Anora secured could have easily gone in a different direction, Mikey Madison’s win over Demi Moore is unquestionably the biggest takeaway of the night. Upon reflection, it may not be as stunning as the initial shock of the announcement made it to be given Madison’s previous wins and Anora’s overall success. Still, it’s not often that the Academy will reward a breakout star over an industry veteran, especially given the context of what Moore’s The Substance is about (aging women in Hollywood).

Best Picture

There was virtually no question that Anora would take home the top prize of the evening after Baker’s hot streak and Madison’s bombshell victory. Conclave, which won the Best Film BAFTA and Best Ensemble Cast at the SAG Awards, certainly had a chance and might have won had Anora not gained so much momentum heading into the Oscars. The Brutalist also had a shot after winning Best Picture at the Golden Globes. Regardless, the Academy made it clear that it was Anora’s year.

Why Anora Deserved The Best Picture Award At The Oscars

Anora Combined Artistic Quality With High Entertainment Value

Anora is exceptionally made with a poignant glimpse into the life of a sex worker who gets a glimpse at a big break and a way out of her lifestyle. It also happened to be one of the most enjoyable films of the year, blending comedy and drama to create a truly unique and entertaining viewing experience. Anora keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, creating an unsettling and unpredictable environment when the tone can shift from provocative and funny to serious and dark in an instant.

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Some of the films that Anora was up against for Best Picture, such as Conclave and The Brutalist, are quite dense and slow-moving compared to the innate excitement and intrigue that Anora offers in every frame. Other highly entertaining offerings came in the form of musicals – A Complete Unknown, Wicked, and Emilia Pérez – any of which would have been the first musical to win Best Picture since 2002’s Chicago.

Some might argue that the biggest snub of all was Dune: Part Two, which earned two Oscars in technical categories, but wasn’t acknowledged much beyond the recurring Conan bit of a sandworm playing instruments. At the end of the night, Anora was a greater and more spot-on choice than Conclave, and even The Brutalist, which may have been seen as more conservative Best Picture choices at the 2025 Oscars.