Later, Wicked, the biggest box-office hit among the best-picture nominees, won awards for production design and costume design.
“I’m the first black man to receive the costume design award,” said costume designer Paul Tazewell, who couldn’t finish that sentence before the crowd began to rise in a standing ovation. “I’m so proud of this.”
Best makeup and hairstyling went to The Substance for its gory creations of beauty and body horror. Dune: Part Two won for both visual effects and sound, and its sandworm – arguably the star of the night – figured into multiple gags throughout the evening.
Brady Corbet’s sprawling postwar epic The Brutalist, shot in VistaVision, won for its cinematography, by Lol Crawley, and its score, by Daniel Blumberg.
POLITICS GO UNMENTIONED, AT FIRST
Though the Oscars featured the first time an actor was nominated for portraying a sitting US president (Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice), politics went largely unmentioned in the first half of the ceremony.
Host Conan O’Brien avoided the topic completely in his opening monologue. The first exception was nearly two hours in, when presenter Daryl Hannah announced simply: “Slava Ukraini!” (“Glory to Ukraine”)
No Other Land, a documentary about Israeli occupation of the West Bank made by a collation of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, won best documentary. After failing to find a US distributor, the filmmakers opted to self-distribute No Other Land. It grossed more than any other documentary nominee.
“There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both our people,” said Yuval Abraham, an Israeili, speaking beside co-director Basel Adra, a Palestinian. “And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path. Why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined, that my people can’t be truly safe if Basel’s people aren’t truly free?
Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, a portrait of resistance under the Brazilian military dictatorship, won best international film. At one point, that award seemed a lock for Emilia Pérez, the lead nominee with 13 nods and backed by a robust campaign by Netflix.
But while Emilia Pérez collapsed, I’m Still Here rode a wave of passionate support in Brazil and political timeliness elsewhere.
