The independent film “Flow” won the Best Animated Feature Oscar on Sunday, securing the first Academy Award for Latvia and its Latvian director, Gints Zilbalodis.
“Flow” follows a cat that finds refuge on a boat along with other animals that join together after a flood destroys their homes.
The movie stood out in 2024, having been rendered on a free and open-source software platform called Blender and having no dialogue.
“Flow” rode a tidal wave into the Oscar race after big studio films like “Inside Out 2,” “Moana 2” and “The Wild Robot,” which all had higher box office numbers, lost the Golden Globe to the small independent film.
The team behind the movie also managed to transform its smaller budget into a nominee for the best international film Oscar, achieving rare recognition for an animated film in two major categories and making history with the first Oscar nominations for the Northern European country ever.
“Flow’s” success provided the strongest, but not the only, European accent during the American ceremony.
Kieran Culkin won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar on Sunday for his role as a motor-mouthed American tourist traveling to Poland with his cousin to explore their Jewish heritage in “A Real Pain.”
A star of the HBO series “Succession,” Culkin was a heavy favorite to win after sweeping BAFTA, Critic's Choice, Golden Globe and SAG Awards for the movie.
“I have no idea how I got here,” Culkin said while accepting his award on stage, adding: “I've been acting all my life. I never felt like this was my trajectory.”
The movie was also nominated for best original screenplay this year but missed out on picture and director nods.
Culkin, 42, has also won a Golden Globe for playing Roman Roy on four seasons of “Succession.” He played alongside his older brother Macaulay in the “Home Alone” movies, and his younger brother Rory is also an actor.
Last year, Culkin told New York Magazine that he got cold feet about playing Benji in “A Real Pain,” until Emma Stone, a producer on the film and his former girlfriend, convinced him to shoot it.
“It was one of the very, very, very rare scripts that I laughed out loud reading,” he said.
Adrien Brody won his second Best Actor Oscar on Sunday for playing a Hungarian immigrant architect in the epic postwar drama “The Brutalist.”
The 51-year-old New York City native had previously won for the classic World War II drama “The Pianist,” based on a true story of Władysław Szpilman, an established Polish-Jewish musician hiding in Warsaw’s ruins to survive.
Brody has said his mother escaped from Hungary and moved across the Atlantic, echoing the journey of the character he plays, a modernist architect named Laszlo Toth.
“I understand a great deal about the repercussions of that on her life and her work as an artist,” he told reporters at the Venice Film Festival. Brody's mother is the celebrated photographer Sylvia Plachy.
The celebrated actor joins an elite group of multiple winners in the category that includes Daniel Day-Lewis, Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson and Spencer Tracy.
The movie stood out in 2024, having been rendered on a free and open-source software platform called Blender and having no dialogue.
“Flow” rode a tidal wave into the Oscar race after big studio films like “Inside Out 2,” “Moana 2” and “The Wild Robot,” which all had higher box office numbers, lost the Golden Globe to the small independent film.
The team behind the movie also managed to transform its smaller budget into a nominee for the best international film Oscar, achieving rare recognition for an animated film in two major categories and making history with the first Oscar nominations for the Northern European country ever.
“Flow’s” success provided the strongest, but not the only, European accent during the American ceremony.
Trip to Poland
Kieran Culkin won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar on Sunday for his role as a motor-mouthed American tourist traveling to Poland with his cousin to explore their Jewish heritage in “A Real Pain.”
A star of the HBO series “Succession,” Culkin was a heavy favorite to win after sweeping BAFTA, Critic's Choice, Golden Globe and SAG Awards for the movie.
“I have no idea how I got here,” Culkin said while accepting his award on stage, adding: “I've been acting all my life. I never felt like this was my trajectory.”
The movie was also nominated for best original screenplay this year but missed out on picture and director nods.
Culkin, 42, has also won a Golden Globe for playing Roman Roy on four seasons of “Succession.” He played alongside his older brother Macaulay in the “Home Alone” movies, and his younger brother Rory is also an actor.
Last year, Culkin told New York Magazine that he got cold feet about playing Benji in “A Real Pain,” until Emma Stone, a producer on the film and his former girlfriend, convinced him to shoot it.
“It was one of the very, very, very rare scripts that I laughed out loud reading,” he said.
Hungarian epic
Adrien Brody won his second Best Actor Oscar on Sunday for playing a Hungarian immigrant architect in the epic postwar drama “The Brutalist.”
The 51-year-old New York City native had previously won for the classic World War II drama “The Pianist,” based on a true story of Władysław Szpilman, an established Polish-Jewish musician hiding in Warsaw’s ruins to survive.
Brody has said his mother escaped from Hungary and moved across the Atlantic, echoing the journey of the character he plays, a modernist architect named Laszlo Toth.
“I understand a great deal about the repercussions of that on her life and her work as an artist,” he told reporters at the Venice Film Festival. Brody's mother is the celebrated photographer Sylvia Plachy.
The celebrated actor joins an elite group of multiple winners in the category that includes Daniel Day-Lewis, Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson and Spencer Tracy.
