The 2025 Oscars season has come and gone already. Many independent films won, most notably “Anora,” which swept the night and might be a sign for future conditions in the industry and film going forward.

This year’s ceremony, the 97th Academy Awards, was full of the glitz and the glamor of Los Angeles and Hollywood culture as always. However, in my opinion, this year’s ceremony was considerably better than past years, and it honestly feels like the show is getting better and better each year starting from 2022. Many remember that year as the show that got overshadowed by the Chris Rock-Will Smith slap, and that might be an apt example of that year’s performance as a ceremony celebrating film. It just felt old, dry, and boring with comedic bits being unfunny. The ceremony itself was dragging with unmemorable nominees and a lack of real focus or “prestige” the show usually has.

But starting in 2023, the quality of the show has been increasing quite dramatically from that year’s stale show. 2023 had some amazing, memorable speeches such as from Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser, and some quite great nominees in general too. 2024 continued the trend with better nominees than the year before with Oppenheimer winning Best Picture and it had some quite memorable moments such as Ryan Gosling performing “I’m Just Ken” from the Barbie film. This year the Academy seems to be continuing what works and personally fixed my biggest pet peeve with the ceremony in past years… the host.

The host has a quite large role in keeping the show together, not taking too much time up, making transitions, setting the mood, and being both funny and respectful, which is a hard line to balance. They have to be great entertainers in other words. In recent years, the host for the Oscars has been quite lackluster with Amy Schumer being the host in 2022 and Jimmy Kimmel being the back-to-back host in the last 2 years. While I can admit that their style of humor isn’t for me, they as hosts always feel painfully below average. Their presentation styles just come off as monotone and lack personality or anything that comes off as unique or charming. This year though, Conan O’Brien hosted and his wit and charm shined through and made the show run great. His absurdity and more genuine lighthearted humor made him seem much more likable than his predecessors and I think that tonal shift definitely positively impacted the show as a whole. His bits were great and he balanced the fine line of being funny and respectful towards the craft of film, all the while being self-aware and poignant as he has always been.

Host aside, this year saw some great and inspired picks for nominees for Best Picture. “Wicked” was a visually stunning, yet simple story with the Broadway appeal of the musical of the same name. Ariana Grande’s signature singing voice pairs well with the tone of many of the songs featured. “Dune Part Two” was a visually inspired, story and character-driven science fiction film that improved all aspects of the first, and had great performances from all actors involved, especially Dave Bautista. The director is clearly building up to make an amazing trilogy. In addition, we had “Anora”, an independent film by Sean Baker, a man who loves independent films deeply and encourages and finances them to grow and thrive in today’s culture. The big marketing push and campaign “Anora” had this season shows the commitment he and his team had to prove its worth and more generally, independent film. This was seen as the marketing campaign for the awards season cost around 18 million dollars compared to the film’s 6 million dollar budget, a quite major gamble that ended up paying off. I think the win of “Anora” is a signal of the change in the movie industry as even if industrial prestige titans like the Oscars recognize the power of independent film and that it can match toe to toe with the big budget studios, then practically it could be anyone who makes the next big critically acclaimed film. Especially because over the years, we’ve seen big-budget film studios win fewer and fewer nominations, especially in the “Best Picture” category. The last notable example within the last five years would be “Oppenheimer,” after all.

It wasn’t just “Anora,” but also “Flow,”, the independent film that was the winner of “Best Animated Feature Film.” The Latvian film made entirely within Blender is the first and only film to win the category as an independent film. I have not had the pleasure of watching it but from the trailers and clips it looks visually stunning and it shouldn’t be a surprise that it won over the likes of “Inside Out 2”, a more traditionally animated Pixar movie. However, it was considered an upset that it won over DreamWork’s “The Wild Robot”, an equally stunning and colorful film with gorgeous natural environments.

Even with the advancements in Independent film aside, “The Brutalist”, a three-hour-long epic about an immigrant in America who left Nazi-controlled Europe after the war, also won many awards, most notably in cinematography. There was also “The Conclave”, “The Substance”, and “I’m Still Here” which I haven’t watched yet but would like to at some point.

That being said, there was still controversy. The film with the most nominations, “Emilia Perez,” A French musical film about a Mexican cartel leader becoming transgender, was widely panned by audiences and critics and was heavily criticized by Mexicans and the LGBT community themselves for its poor representation of their cultures. That being said, the film only walked away with two wins which made many fans happy at its overall poor performance.

Overall, this year’s ceremony was a great celebration in film and film culture and may be a sign of a turning point within the industry as a whole and how it views independent film going forward.