5 Reasons Anora Is Now Favorite To Win Best Picture After So Many Counted It Out

After being discounted from the Oscars race for a while, Sean Baker’s Anora has surprisingly emerged as the frontrunner to win Best Picture. When the nominations for the 97th Academy Awards were announced, there were plenty of nominees that were expected, but they also included a few surprises. I’m Still Here transcended the Best International Feature Film category to earn a Best Picture nomination. Denis Villeneuve was snubbed for Best Director for his work on Dune: Part Two, while Monica Barbaro earned a surprise nod for her turn as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown.

The frontrunners in most of the Oscar categories have been set for a while. Timothée Chalamet is expected to win Best Actor for A Complete Unknown. Kieran Culkin is expected to win Best Supporting Actor for A Real Pain. But the top prize, Best Picture, has been up in the air for a while. The frontrunner has changed a couple of times. It’s anyone’s guess which movie will actually take the trophy home, but the current frontrunner to win Best Picture is Anora — and there are a few reasons for that.

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5

Anora Won The Critics’ Choice Award For Best Picture

The frontrunners for the Oscars are determined by how well each movie does at all the smaller awards ceremonies leading up to the Oscars. The Golden Globes are usually the biggest indicator for the Oscars, but the other awards shows have an impact, too. At the 30th Critics’ Choice Awards, Anora won Best Picture, making it the first ever film to win Best Picture at the Critics’ Choice Awards without winning in any other categories.

Mikey Madison lost Best Actress to Demi Moore for The Substance. Sean Baker lost Best Director to Jon M. Chu for Wicked, Best Original Screenplay to Coralie Fargeat for The Substance, and Best Editing to Marco Costa for Challengers. But in spite of these losses, it still took home Best Picture.

4

Anora Won The Biggest Award At PGA

Whereas Best Director honors the best achievement in directing and Best Original Screenplay honors the best achievement in screenwriting, Best Picture is technically reserved for the producers steering the ship. The award goes to the movie itself, but the actual trophies go to the producers that got the film made. So, naturally, the Producers Guild of America’s opinion carries a lot of weight in that department.

Anora won the top prize at the 36th PGA Awards. The Darryl F. Zanuck Award is the PGA’s equivalent of Best Picture. The nominees were almost identical to the Oscar nominees (albeit with A Real Pain and September 5 taking the place of I’m Still Here and Nickel Boys), but Anora took it home.

3

Sean Baker Won Best Director At DGA

Image via NEON

At the 77th Directors Guild of America Awards, Anora’s Sean Baker won for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures. As the flowery name would suggest, this is the DGA’s equivalent of Best Director. Baker beat out Oscar frontrunners like Jacques Audiard and Brady Corbet to take home the trophy.

This is a promising sign that Baker could win Best Director at the Oscars, which, in turn, is a promising sign that Anora could win Best Picture. Four of the last five Best Director winners correlated with the Best Picture winner. If history repeats itself, Anora could take home both Best Picture and Best Director.

2

The Brutalist & Emilia Pérez Have Been Hurt By Controversies

Before Anora became the frontrunner, the previous favorites to win Best Picture at the 2025 Oscars were The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez, but they’ve both been marred by controversy. The Brutalist has faced some backlash for its use of A.I. — not just for technical touch-ups, but for creative purposes, too. Since A.I. art is the antithesis of real art, this will likely cost The Brutalist one of the world’s top prizes for artistic achievement.

Emilia Pérez, on the other hand, has faced a whirlwind of controversy. The movie itself has been criticized for its inauthentic portrayal of Mexican culture and the trans experience, while its title star, Karla Sofía Gascón, has come under fire for a long backlog of hateful tweets. Anora faced some minor controversy for not using an intimacy coordinator, but that choice was made by the actors themselves, and it’s been massively overshadowed by the other controversies in the 2025 Oscars race.

1

Anora Is Both Arthouse Fare & Crowd-Pleasing Entertainment

Every year, the Best Picture nominees at the Oscars are a mix of obscure arthouse movies, like Tár and The Zone of Interest, and crowd-pleasing blockbuster entertainment, like Barbie and Top Gun: Maverick. But the winner tends to be a combination of both; the best of both worlds. Last year’s winner, Oppenheimer, is both a three-hour historical epic and a star-studded Christopher Nolan thriller. The previous winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once, is both a sobering, experimental family drama and a mind-bending sci-fi action comedy.

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Out of this year’s nominees, Anora, The Substance, and Dune: Part Two are the only movies that fit the bill. Wicked is a populist blockbuster, while The Brutalist is a bleak, harrowing affair; they both fall on just one side of the spectrum. Anora is both a challenging arthouse drama and a laugh-out-loud crowd-pleasing romcom.

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Anora

Comedy

Drama

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Romance

9/10

10

8/10

Release Date

October 18, 2024

Runtime

139 Minutes

Director

Sean Baker

Writers

Sean Baker

Cast

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• 

  Mikey Madison

  Anora

• 

  Mark Eydelshteyn

  Ivan

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Source: https://dinhtienhoang.edu.vn
Category: Entertainment