NOMADLAND TAKES HOME OSCAR FOR BEST PICTURE
It was a night of big wins for meditative road drama Nomadland which got the Oscar for best picture as well as best director for Chloe Zhao, the first woman of colour to get the coveted trophy, at the 93rd Academy Awards, a socially distanced event held in the shadow of the Covid pandemic.
The film, about grief and finding connections outside the traditional structure of a family, also won Frances Mcdormand her third best actress Oscar after Fargo and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as well as a gong for producing it.
The usual glitter that accompanies Hollywood's most starry night had dimmed but with women and people of colour creating history as the first-time winners, there was plenty to celebrate this year.
Veteran actor Anthony Hopkins, who did not attend the ceremony, won best actor Oscar for his performance as a man suffering from dementia in the relationship drama The Father. The actor stars opposite Olivia Colman in the movie.
It was a surprise win for the actor as many expected the trophy to go to Chadwick Boseman for his turn in May Rainey's Black Bottom.
The night clearly belonged to Zhao and Nomadland, a front-runner for the awards from the beginning.
Zhao, who moved to the US from China as a teenager, is the first woman of colour and the only second woman after Kathryn Bigelow's 2010 win for The Hurt Locker to win the best director trophy.
“This is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves and to hold on the goodness in other no matter how difficult it is to do that,” the 39year-old director said in her acceptance speech.
"I have always found goodness in the people I've met everywhere I went in the world,” she added.
The film's star and producer Mcdormand struck a chord with her speech in a year that has seen theatres remain shut as people across the globe struggled with the coronavirus pandemic.
"One day very, very soon, take everyone you know into a theatre, shoulder to shoulder, in that dark space, and watch every film that's represented here tonight," Mcdormand said in her speech.
Daniel Kaluuya won best supporting actor for Judas and the Black Messiah. The Get Out star was widely expected to walk away with the trophy for his impressive performance as the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.
Irrfan Khan remembered, My Octopus Teacher bags award
My Octopus Teacher, which has Indian filmmaker Swati Thiyagarajan as associate producer and production manager, won the best documentary feature at the Oscars, which also honoured actor Irrfan Khan and costume designer Bhanu in its 'In Memoriam' segment.
Indian echoes at the 93rd Academy Awards, a social distancing event held in the shadow of the pandemic, were faint but distinct.
“We won!!! Best documentary feature Oscar!!!," Thiyagarajan, who has also written “Born Wild: Journey into the Wild Hearts of India and Africa”, tweeted after "My Octopus Teacher" bagged the Oscar.
The Netflix Original documentary, directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, documents a year spent by filmmaker Craig Foster and his unusual relationship with a female octopus in a South African kelp forest. Foster was also a producer via his involvement with the Sea Change Project while wife Thiyagarajan was the production manager for the film.
China censors Chloé Zhao’s Oscar win Beijing-born Chloe Zhao was scrubbed from Chinese social media on Monday as a nationalist backlash airbrushed out her remarkable achievement of becoming the first woman of colour to win the best director Oscar.
Zhao on Sunday night became the second woman ever to win the coveted award at the Oscars, as her film Nomadland bagged best picture and its lead, Frances Mcdormand, won best actress.
But all recent posts containing her name and Nomadland were mysteriously wiped from the Twitter-like site Weibo by Monday noon Beijing time.