After months of campaigning, the DGA, PGA, and WGA awards have solidified Sean Baker’s Anora as the new frontrunner at the 97th Academy Awards. As the Palm d’Or-winning film ascends in the Oscar race, it raises the question of why it stands out to voters now as the best of the year.
Finding the defining film of 2024 has been a complicated journey with many twists and turns to say the least. Journalists and Oscar bloggers have been scratching their heads trying to make sense of what film speaks to this moment in time and will stand out to awards groups as the film of the year. Donald Trump was re-elected, and hateful and bigoted rhetoric became normalized across the globe. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry is still recovering from the pandemic and labor strikes. Both the film industry and the country at large are deep in a period of instability, and it has been nearly impossible to gauge how voters would respond when it came down to singling out their most significant films of the year.
For context, the Oscars do have a history of being influenced by volatile times. Eight years ago, in the wake of Trump’s first election, voters surprised everyone by honoring Moonlight with the top award. It was an important win for one of the best films of the year and was looked at as a way to champion stories and storytellers the industry and America had largely ignored.
Now in 2025 it seems prognosticators have been racing to pinpoint what this year’s Moonlight will be while failing to acknowledge the world and the industry is in a much more different, and unfortunately bleak, state. 2024 was a year of uncertainty for everyone in the American film industry. Hollywood has not fully recovered from both the pandemic and the numerous strikes and a good chunk of the American film industry has consistently been out of work since 2023. Fewer films and television shows are being produced and those that are greenlit are now being taken overseas for production in what has felt like a disturbing response to the gains made in the recent strike negotiations for livable wages.
The state of Hollywood is so dire that DGA president and one of the most influential television directors in entertainment, Lesli Linka Glatter, utilized her DGA speech to call for studio leaders and producers to bring production back to the U.S. in force. At this week’s Artios Awards many high profile casting directors revealed that they have been out of work for nearly a year, some since the summer of 2023. Last year the Art Directors Guild suspended their training program and stated that they could not “in good conscience encourage you to pursue you to pursue our profession” with 75% of their membership unemployed.
Times are dire, and people are leaving this industry in droves. In fact, out of the ten PGA nominees and five DGA nominees, only two films were shot and made in the United States: Sean Baker’s Anora and James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown. Even an American studio film like Wicked was shot in London while a film like The Substance which takes place in Los Angeles was shot in France. American filmmaker Brady Corbet (who many believed was the frontrunner at the DGA awards) shot his American-set The Brutalist in Hungary to curb the cost of paying the crew union rates.
With all of that uncertainty and anxiety regarding the future of American filmmaking as an industry, it seems that American guilds’ response to all of this has been to rally behind Anora as a celebration of what American filmmaking, especially American independent film, has always been and what those in the industry hope it will continue to thrive as in the future.
Anora has everything that the American filmmaking industry wants to celebrate. It’s impeccably crafted and equally entertaining. It’s helmed by a celebrated independent filmmaker who is finally getting the recognition he deserves while starring an up-and-coming movie star. Anora is an original story that has something to say about the American experience and on top of being produced and shot here in the U.S. it’s one of the few films not to actively use A.I. (another hot button issue that was at the forefront in the recent strikes).
Thematically Anora is also a perfectly astute film to echo how filmmakers and union workers feel in today’s climate. In many ways it speaks to our increasing disillusionment of the American Dream and the jobs that people will take just to survive while the rich and powerful use and discard us. Most creatives and laborers will know exactly how that feels.
With that in mind it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Anora has jumped ahead and established itself as the Oscar frontrunner, at least among its American industry peer groups. Academy members often vote for what they want to see more of or what they think can initiate change. After winning both the top PGA and DGA prizes last week and the WGA this weekend it has become clear that American filmmakers, whether consciously or unconsciously, recognize that uplifting Anora is sending a message that the American film industry is worth investing in both to save jobs in such a dire economic period and that American storytellers are still as innovative and dynamic as they have always been. Voting for Anora is a call to action for those with power to invest in local filmmakers, in independent filmmakers, and to support filmmakers and crew members as they fight to keep this industry alive.
Over the next couple of weeks it will be interesting to see if that continues to ring true among guild and union voters. This weekend the WGA winners will be announced where Anora is considered the strong frontrunner. Additionally the BAFTA winners will be announced and while this group wasn’t directly affected by the strikes and the falling out of American production they are filmmakers who are also dealing with a changing industry. The question over the next couple weeks will be if international voters share the same sentiment, especially as the Academy has prioritized diversifying its membership internationally.
