Chloe Zhao’s film “Nomaland” won numerous Academy Awards on April 25, 2021. – Todd Wawrychuk / AMPAS // SIPA
The big favorite was indeed at the rendezvous of the awards at the Oscars. Nomadland won the supreme award for best feature film on Sunday while its director, Chloé Zhao, became the first non-white filmmaker to win the award for best director. Before Chloe Zhao, only one other woman had received this coveted award, Kathryn Bigelow in 2010 for Minesweepers.
“What an incredible and unique journey we made together,” said the Chinese-born director, many of whose actors in the film are amateurs playing their own role. Frances McDormand, one of the rare professional actresses in this hybrid of road movie, social drama and documentary, won the Oscar for best actress.
The surprise Anthony Hopkins
Among men, Anthony Hopkins surprised by winning the statuette for best actor for his role as an old man sinking into dementia in The Father, film by French author Florian Zeller awarded the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Hopkins, 83, was not present to receive his award. He was a rather unlikely outsider in the face of Chadwick Boseman, who died last summer and who seemed set to receive a posthumous Oscar.
The most attended ceremony in Hollywood was held exceptionally this year in a historic train station in the center of Los Angeles hosting the stars in contention. This is where the Dane Thomas Vinterberg, director of Drunk, received the Oscar for best foreign film for its bittersweet comedy featuring four friends conducting a quasi-scientific drunkenness experiment.
Award-winning French
Florian Zeller, meanwhile, brandished his golden statuette in Paris, where the Oscars had planned a dedicated site and a satellite link with Los Angeles. Another Frenchman, Nicolas Becker, was recognized by the Academy with the Oscar for best sound on Sound of Metal, which depicts a heavy metal drummer losing his hearing. France received a third Oscar with an award for short documentary Colette, dedicated to Colette Marin-Catherine, a 90-year-old woman who was a member of the Resistance under the Nazi Occupation.
Health crisis obliges, even Hollywood magnates, like Bob Iger, the boss of Disney, did not receive an invitation card for the event. He was therefore unable to witness in flesh and blood the victory of Drunk, a dreamlike fable from Pixar studios, in the category of best animated film.
Disappointment for Netflix
After years of controversy over the Academy’s lineup, deemed too white and too masculine, two actors of color have been honored: Briton Daniel Kaluuya, 32, for Judas and the Black Messiah, and the South Korean Youn Yuh-jung for Minari. In addition, the first Oscar of the evening, that of the original screenplay, went to Emerald Fennell for his film. Promising Young Woman, feminist thriller inspired by the #MeToo movement.
Finally, even if it leaves with seven awards in total, the Netflix platform has, on the other hand, suffered a new disappointment in the major categories, despite several films which tackled themes that were nevertheless very topical.