[Trending News] Oscars 2025 live: Anora, Wicked and Emilia Pérez pick up early awards as Dune wins for sound and visual effects

Stuart Heritage

For best cinematography, they’re going down the costume route and getting performers from each nominated film to floridly pay tribute to each nominated cinematographer. If you want to pop out and make a cuppa, you’ve probably got a few minutes here.

Stuart Heritage

Although, now I think of it, I’m not sure that ending an In Memoriam segment with a prompt to scan a QR code is necessarily the graceful touch the Oscars think it is.

Gwilym Mumford

Ahead of the In Memoriam segment, Morgan Freeman paid personal tribute to Gene Hackman, who was found dead this week:

“This week our community lost a giant,” Freeman said. “And I lost a dear friend – Gene Hackman. I had the pleasure of working alongside Gene on two films: Unforgiven and Under Suspicion. Like everyone who has ever shared a scene with him, I learned he was a generous performer and a man who elevated everyone’s work. He won two Oscars and won hearts of people around the world. Gene told me, ‘I don’t think about legacy, I just hope people will remember me as someone who did good work.’ Gene, you’ll be remembered for that and so much more. Rest in peace, my friend.”

Stuart Heritage

This is a very traditional In Memoriam. Nothing flashy, just a lot of (big) names and sad music. It did the job.

Stuart Heritage

Here’s Morgan Freeman now, paying tribute to Gene Hackman. It’s as heartfelt as you can get, and it plays to absolute silence. And it is a prelude to the In Memoriam section.

Stuart Heritage

And they were played off just as they were expressing their love for each other. Perfect timing.

I’m Not a Robot wins live action short

Stuart Heritage

Victoria Warmerdam and Trent accept the award and, the way things are going, they had better be snappy before their mics get cut off.

Gwilym Mumford

There has been a widespread assumption that Dune: Part Two’s Oscar chances had been hampered by the fact that there’s another instalment to come: no one wants to hand a prize to the middle film in a trilogy. So it’s good that it at least has managed a few below-the-line awards. In fact it’s now at the top of the leaderboard with Emilia Pérez and Anora.

Still I wonder if that third Dune film is going to do as well at the Oscars as people might expect. By all accounts the source material is pretty loopy:

Dune: Part Two wins best visual effects

Stuart Heritage

So this is the part of the show where the other film that people actually went to see (after Wicked) gets recognised. Again, hard to argue with this one. Nicely, the winners of both these awards made sure to thank Denis Villeneuve, who many believed was locked out of the best director category. Oh, and they got played off as well. Now they want to be snappy.

Dune: Part Two wins best sound

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Dune looked set to be the great overlooked blockbuster of the awards this year, but this category couldn’t belong to anyone else. I think I still have hearing loss. Anyway, I don’t know if that was a good speech or not because they got played off really quickly.

Stuart Heritage

And now, a tribute to the firefighters who battled the California wildfires. Standing ovations all round. And then Conan O’Brien makes them all read jokes that he’s not brave enough to tell. They tell jokes about Joker: Folie à Deux being bad. They tell jokes about Bob Dylan not being able to sing very well. They tell a joke about Conan O’Brien getting stuck in a tree.

Gwilym Mumford

It’s striking that the night’s most powerful and political speech came for a film that still has not been picked up for distribution in the US. Remarkably, though, No Other Land was still the highest-grossing documentary of the five Oscar nominees, thanks to bold self-releasing campaign by its co-directors. Adrian Horton wrote for the Guardian this week about the challenges faced by political documentaries in 2025:

Stuart Heritage

Even better, the speech seemed to be universally well received in the auditorium. Typically, with Michael Moore in 2003 and Jonathan Glazer last year, speeches this strident tend to get a mixed reaction in the room. The fact that this didn’t is absolutely a testament to the power of No Other Land.

No Other Land wins best documentary feature

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And with that the whispered politicism of the night becomes a roar. Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham accept the award and ask the world to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They note that Israelis and Palestinians made the film together. And they criticise America for blocking the path to peace. This is a proper, undeniable moment.

The Only Girl in the Orchestra wins best documentary short

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Molly O’Brien and Lisa Remington accept the award and sort of say that the whole world is a living nightmare, so that’s nice. One of them talks so much that the other one gets played off. Classic Oscars.

Gwilym Mumford

A small cheer in the Guardian office as The Only Girl in the Orchestra wins. Imogen Tilden, who is sat to my left, interviewed its subject, the double bassist Orin O’Brien earlier this year

Stuart Heritage

Twelve awards left. We can do this.