At the 98th Academy Awards, the night’s top winner was Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Battle by Battle”. The film took six awards, including Best Picture, while Anderson himself received his first Oscars for directing and adapted screenplay.
Along with the top prize, the film won awards for Best Supporting Actor for Sean Penn, editing, and casting. The latter category was introduced by the Academy only this year. Its main rival was “Sinners,” which led the field with 16 nominations but ultimately won three Oscars.
“I wrote this film for my children to apologize for the mess we left them in this world,” Anderson said on stage, adding that he hoped their generation would bring back common sense and decency.
The Oscar for Best Documentary Feature went to “Mr. Nobody Against Putin”, a film about military propaganda reaching an ordinary Russian school. It was made by Pavel Talankin, a teacher and videographer from Karabash, together with Danish director David Borenstein.
Accepting the award, Talankin called for wars to stop for the sake of the future and children. Borenstein said the film shows how a country can be lost through countless small acts of complicity.
The acting awards went to Michael B. Jordan for “Sinners” and Jessie Buckley for “Hamnet.” “Sentimental Value” by Joachim Trier was named Best International Feature, while the animation winners were “K-pop Demon Hunters” and the short film “The Girl Who Cried Pearls”.