Oscars 2025: How ‘Anora’ is leading the Best Picture race by simply outlasting the wreckage

Anora emerges as Oscars frontrunner after competitors self-destruct, but can it maintain momentum to win Best Picture?

For months, the Oscars race this year has had every contender suffering from some combination of bad luck, bad strategy, or the increasingly unavoidable reality that the Internet never forgets. But then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of its competitors’ self-immolation, Anora has now suddenly emerged as the de facto frontrunner — not because it has been running the smartest campaign (which it has), but because, miraculously, it’s the last film standing.

Sean Baker’s scrappy, $6 million indie, about a Brooklyn sex worker caught in a whirlwind romance with the son of a Russian oligarch had spent the better part of the season as a respected underdog, beloved by critics but largely ignored by the precursors that usually dictate the Oscars trajectory. The Golden Globes snubbed it entirely, and until last week, it seemed destined for the same fate that befalls most Cannes darlings — endless praise, limited hardware. 

Then, in one seismic weekend, Anora pulled off an improbable hat trick, winning Best Picture at the Producers Guild Awards (PGA), Best Director at the Directors Guild Awards (DGA), and Best Picture at the Critics Choice Awards. It was a decisive flex of industry muscle, and more importantly, a death blow to its competitors, who spent the week spontaneously combusting.

Drowning in controversy

Each major contender this year seemed to have developed a fatal flaw somewhere along the way: The Brutalist couldn’t get the Screen Actors Guild to care (not to mention its own brief AI scuffle), Conclave suffered from an absent director nomination, Wicked saw its director and writers shut out by the Academy, and A Complete Unknown was still searching for a room full of people who actually loved it. Meanwhile, former frontrunner on the cusp of glory, Emilia Pérez became collateral damage in a controversy so volatile that even its biggest defenders quietly excused themselves from the conversation.

Even Anora wasn’t immune to controversy. Its lead actress, Mikey Madison, raised eyebrows when she casually admitted that she had opted not to use an intimacy coordinator for the film’s numerous explicit sex scenes. But compared to what had befallen its competitors, Anora’s missteps seemed almost quaint.

In a season where every major contender has been wounded by scandal, Anora has benefited from the one thing no awards strategist can plan for: being the least objectionable choice. That’s not to say it doesn’t have passionate supporters (take a quick scroll through the Oscars subreddit for reference), but in a year where voters may be exhausted by controversy, it somehow helps that the biggest knock against it is that its makers don’t believe in intimacy coordinators.