The 2025 Academy Awards finished up Sunday with Anora capturing five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director (Sean Baker) and Best Actress (Mikey Madison), in a star-studded ceremony hosted by Conan O’Brien on Hollywood’s biggest night.

Adrien Brody won his second Best Actor award, for The Brutalist, while Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) and Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez) took home Oscars for supporting roles.

Morgan Freeman paid tribute to Gene Hackman, who was found dead last week along with his wife and one of their three dogs in their New Mexico home, and Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg and Queen Latifah honored Quincy Jones, who died in November.

Wicked co-stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo opened the show with a powerful medley of songs: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (Wizard of Oz), “Home” (The Wiz) and their film’s “Defying Gravity.”

The show recognized firefighters who battled the deadly Los Angeles wildfires that led to the nominations being postponed twice in January.

There is a great deal of coverage at various levels of media that detail everything that happened, and everything everyone said, but filtered here for you are the items of specific interest to the Geeking World of which we are a part.

The Awards

The categories listed show all the nominees, with the winner shown in bold. From the Geeking World’s perspective, here are the highlights.

• Dune: Part Two received five nominations, winning only Best Visual Effects.
• The Substance was nominated for four awards, winning only Best Makeup & Hairstyling.
• Wicked got seven nomimations, winning only for Best Costume Design.
• Sebastian Stan, The Winter Soldier in the MCU films, got a nomination for Best Actor for his role in the politically charged film The Apprentice.
• The Wild Robot, the animated feature starring Lupita Nyong’o in the title role, was nominated three times, winning none.
• Dune: Part Two was nominated five times, winning for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.
• Nosferatu received three nominations, winning none.
• Flow, the animated film from Latvia that took five and a half years to produce and was created entirely in Blender, won best animated feature, beating out Inside Out 2, Memoir of a Snail, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, and The Wild Robot.

Of particular note was Tazewell, who called his Costume Design for Wicked win ‘a Wizard of Oz moment’, and the pinnacle of his career. He is the first African American man ever to win the award, and only the second African American of either gender to win (the first was Ruth E. Carter, who made history for her work in 2018’s, Black Panther).

“I’ve been designing costumes for over 35 years. Much has been on Broadway, and now into film,” he said in the Oscars press room. “The whole way through, there was never a Black male designer that I saw that I could follow that I could see as an inspiration. And to realize that that’s actually me, it becomes a Wizard of Oz moment. It’s like, no place like home.”

Best Picture

• Anora
• The Brutalist
• A Complete Unknown
• Conclave
• Dune: Part Two
• Emilia Pérez
• I’m Still Here
• Nickel Boys
• The Substance
• Wicked

Best Actress

• Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
• Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
• Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here
• Mikey Madison, Anora
• Demi Moore, The Substance

Best Director

• Sean Baker, Anora
• Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
• James Mangold, A Complete Unknown
• Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
• Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Best Actor

• Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
• Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
• Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
• Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
• Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Original Score

• The Brutalist
• Conclave
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked
• The Wild Robot

International Feature Film

• I’m Still Here (Brazil)
• The Girl With the Needle (Denmark)
• Emilia Pérez (France)
• The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany)
• Flow (Latvia)

Cinematography

• The Brutalist
• Dune: Part Two
• Emilia Pérez
• Maria
• Nosferatu

Live Action Short Film

• Anuja
• I’m Not a Robot
• The Last Ranger
• A Lien
• The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Visual Effects

• Alien: Romulus
• Better Man
• Dune: Part Two
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Wicked

Sound

• A Complete Unknown
• Dune: Part Two
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked
• The Wild Robot

Documentary Feature Film

• Black Box Diaries
• No Other Land
• Porcelain War
• Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
• Sugarcane

Documentary Short Film

• Death by Numbers
• I Am Ready, Warden
• Incident
• Instruments of a Beating Heart
• The Only Girl in the Orchestra

Best Original Song

• “El Mal” from Emilia Pérez
• “The Journey” from The Six Triple Eight
• “Like a Bird” from Sing Sing
• “Mi Camino” from Emilia Pérez
• “Never Too Late” from Elton John: Never Too Late

Production Design

• The Brutalist
• Conclave
• Dune: Part Two
• Nosferatu
• Wicked

Best Supporting Actress

• Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
• Ariana Grande, Wicked
• Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
• Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
• Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Film Editing

• Anora
• The Brutalist
• Conclave
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked

Makeup and Hairstyling

• A Different Man
• Emilia Pérez
• Nosferatu
• The Substance
• Wicked

Best Adapted Screenplay

• A Complete Unknown
• Conclave
• Emilia Pérez
• Nickel Boys
• Sing Sing

Costume Design

• A Complete Unknown
• Conclave
• Gladiator II
• Nosferatu
• Wicked

Animated Short Film

• Beautiful Men
• In the Shadow of the Cypress
• Magic Candies
• Wander to Wonder
• Yuck!

Animated Feature Film

• Flow
• Inside Out 2
• Memoir of a Snail
• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
• The Wild Robot

Best Supporting Actor

• Yura Borisov, Anora
• Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
• Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
• Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
• Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

We congralute the winners, and the nominees alike. It’s an honor to be nominated at all, and after that, it can boil down to being a popularity contest, but each of the nominees and winners have made noteworthy and significant contributions to their art.

Well done, one and all, and we can hardly wait to see what the next year in cinema will bring.