LOS ANGELES: Chloé Zhao has made history at this year’s Academy Awards.
Zhao won the Oscar for best director for Nomadland. With this, she has become the second woman and the first woman of color to win the award.
She said, “My entire Nomadland company, what a crazy, once-in-a-lifetime journey we’ve all been on together.”
Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win the award, for The Hurt Locker, in 2009.
It was the first Oscar for Zhao, 39, who was born in Beijing and went to college and film school in the United States.
Best animated feature
Pixar’s Soul has won the Oscar for best animated feature.
The film stars the voices of Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey.
Soul follows an aspiring musician and middle-school band teacher who loses his life — but attempts to escape the afterlife during his quest to help an infant soul.
Pixar has now won the award 11 times in the 20 years since the category was established.
Best supporting actor
Daniel Kaluuya used a lead role to win a best supporting actor Oscar. He’ll take it.
Kaluuya won his first Academy Award on Sunday night for playing one of the two title roles in Judas and the Black Messiah.
“I’d like to thank my mom,” Kaluuya said, as his mother teared up while watching. “You gave me everything. You gave me your factory settings. So I could stand at my fullest height.”
Kaluuya played Chicago Blank Panther leader Fred Hampton, who was killed in an FBI raid in 1969.
The other nominees were Paul Raci, Leslie Odom Jr. and Sacha Baron Cohen.
Best international feature film
Raise a glass for Another Round.
The film from Denmark, directed by Thomas Vinterburg, has won the Oscar for best international feature film.
“This is beyond anything I could ever imagine,” Vinterburg said from the stage at Union Station in Los Angeles on Sunday night. “Except this is something I’ve always imagined.”
It is the fourth time a film from Denmark has won in the category. The last was In a Better World in 2010.
Vinterberg teared up when he told the audience his daughter died four days into shooting. “An accident on the highway took my daughter away,” he said. “We ended up making this movie for her, as her monument. So, Ida, this is a miracle that just happened.”
Vinterburg was also nominated for best director Sunday night.
Best original screenplay
The first Oscar of the night went to Emerald Fennell, writer and director of Promising Young Woman.
It’s the first Oscar for Fennell, a 35-year-old British actor and screenwriter.
(AP)
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