Oscars: How Category Fraud, Social Media Scandals and Independent Film Defined an Unpredictable Season
variety.comClayton Davis Senior Awards Editor One of the craziest awards seasons in Oscar history concluded on Sunday with the coronation of Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a comedy about an outer-boroughs sex worker that was shot in guerrilla fashion for just $6 million.
Despite its art-house origins, this most independent of indie films was celebrated as the year’s best by the Hollywood establishment.
That’s a credit to Baker’s talent and to Neon, the studio that guided 2019’s “Parasite” to a similarly unorthodox victory when it became the first non-English-language film to take the best picture prize.
By choosing “Anora,” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, once dismissed as old and out of touch, has demonstrated that it is open to movies that push the envelope, in terms of both language (there are more than 400 uses of the F-word in the film) and sexuality.
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