Oscars Editorial: Celebrate Indies! But Don’t Forget to Support Them | FirstShowing.net

Oscars Editorial: Celebrate Indies! But Don’t Forget to Support Them

by Tamara Khodova
March 4, 2025

After the ceremony, four-time Academy Award-winner and Anora director Sean Baker was late to his own victory celebration because he had to go home to walk his favorite dog Bunsen (this pooch). This is hardly the behavior you’d expect from an Oscar winner on the biggest night of his life… But Baker is no ordinary Hollywood success story – he’s the exception that proves the rules still need changing. The 97th Academy Awards ceremony was a massive triumph for independent cinema (final winners list here). Anora, with its modest budget of ~$6.5 million, took home five Oscars, including Best Picture. 25-year-old Mikey Madison, for whom Anora was her first leading role in a feature film, won the Oscar for Best Actress, while Sean Baker single-handedly claimed the awards for Original Screenplay, Film Editing, and Directing. But there’s more.

The monumental film The Brutalist also restored many viewers’ faith in great American cinema and won three awards: Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and a second Oscar for its lead actor Adrien Brody. Flow, a small Latvian project made for just $3 million, won Best Animated Feature. Kieran Culkin from A Real Pain, which came from Sundance 2024, took Best Supporting Actor; and Edward Berger’s Conclave claimed Best Adapted Screenplay. Meanwhile, many big-budget Hollywood movies only won the technical awards. Wicked, tipped by some enthusiasts as a potential Best Picture winner, went home with just two awards for Costume Design & Production Design. Streaming giant Netflix, despite dominating the noms, left almost empty-handed once again. Emilia Perez, with its record 13 nominations, managed to win only two Oscars. By the end of the awards ceremony, indie distributor Neon emerged as the night’s biggest winner.

Just weeks ago, The Brutalist director Brady Corbet revealed that despite being a major Oscar contender, he and his wife, creative partner Mona Fastvold, hadn’t earned anything from their last two films. “I’ve spoken to many filmmakers with films nominated this year who can’t pay their rent,” Corbet said. “You’re not paid to be promoting a film,” he stated at the end of his awards season run. (Read more on Deadline or listen to his Marc Maron podcast episode.) One of the most striking moments at the Indie Spirit Awards was Baker’s emotional speech about the dire state of independent cinema (watch in full here). The director emphasized that indie film is struggling right now more than ever. “[The] revenue stream is gone, and the only way to see significant back end is to have a box office hit” with profits that exceed what most films will ever make.

During his awards campaign, Sean Baker described himself as an “indie film lifer,” a director who wants “to make personal films that are intended for theatrical release with subject matter that would never be greenlit by the big studios.” He continues: “We want complete artistic freedom and the freedom to cast who is right for the role, not who we’re forced to cast considering box office value, or how many followers they have on social media. The system has to change because this is simply unsustainable.”

Similar pleas were made during the 2025 Oscar ceremony – and not just by Baker. Artists of all kinds urged Hollywood to remember independent cinema and to support theatrical releases, which remain the only way for independent filmmakers to earn anything at all. Streaming isn’t where the money’s at. These same artists became the heroes of the 97th Academy Awards – despite it being a glamorous “Hollywood” event. These are the same independent auteurs who can’t pay their rent and desperately search for funding for years, only to create their unique films on a shoestring budget. These are the same directors who fiercely defend their artistic vision every time they make a film. These are the same filmmakers who prioritize creating a unique artistic statement over making millions or landing cushy jobs at Hollywood studios. On Sunday, Hollywood sincerely celebrated these people while simultaneously suffocating them and destroying their last hope for survival. In this hypocrisy, Hollywood remains true to itself.

There are so many conversations and articles being written right now discussing how independent cinema swept the Oscars and how that represents change. This is great and all, it’s an obvious topic considering the results, but we should not stop here. Indie films deserve our support well beyond the Oscars. They deserve our support throughout the entire year. And if next year another big Hollywood movie wins Best Picture, we still should be supporting independent cinema anyway. Buy tickets for these films, convince your friends to go watch these films, support your local independent movie theaters (like Baker talked about in his speech) and keep celebrating the work of passionate artists who don’t have Hollywood budgets to work with.

The Oscar victories of Anora, The Brutalist, and Flow bring incredible joy, primarily for all those passionate cinephiles and artists who have created something beautiful thanks to their true devotion to cinema. These people deserve all the awards, and recognition, and more. In Hollywood, however, with its notoriously short memory, we hope this won’t remain just a self-contained victory. We don’t want to see independent artists returning to their desperate struggle for funding their original projects the next day, while studio executives confidently march forward making another sequel to a prequel, calmly waiting for more poor artists to spark another revolution through sheer enthusiasm alone. It’s quite easy to celebrate a victory when someone else has done all the hard work – it seems it’s time for Hollywood to embrace more independent artists again.

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