The 98th Academy Awards were held on Sunday night (March 15) at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, honouring the best films of 2025.

The ceremony, hosted by comedian Conan O’Brien, celebrated achievements across 24 categories and was attended by some of the biggest names in global cinema.

The biggest winner of the night was ‘One Battle After Another’, which swept six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson. The film also won Best Supporting Actor for Sean Penn, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Casting and Best Film Editing.

In the lead acting categories, Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for his performance in ‘Sinners’, while Jessie Buckley secured the Best Actress award for her role in the historical drama ‘Hamnet’.

Veteran actor Sean Penn’s win for Best Supporting Actor marked the third Oscar of his career, adding to his earlier Academy Awards for ‘Mystic River’ and ‘Milk’.

Meanwhile, Amy Madigan won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role in ‘Weapons’, delivering an emotional acceptance speech thanking her husband, actor Ed Harris.

The film ‘Sinners’, which led the nominations this year, also picked up several major awards, including Best Original Screenplay for Ryan Coogler, Best Cinematography for Autumn Durald Arkapaw and Best Original Score for Ludwig Göransson.

In the international category, Norway’s ‘Sentimental Value’, directed by Joachim Trier, won Best International Feature Film, becoming the first Norwegian film to receive the honour.

The animated musical ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and also took home Best Original Song for the track “Golden”.

Among technical categories, ‘Frankenstein’ won three awards for Best Production Design, Best Costume Design and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ won Best Visual Effects, while the racing drama ‘F1’ received the Oscar for Best Sound.

In the documentary category, ‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ won Best Documentary Feature. The Best Live Action Short Film category ended in a rare tie, with ‘The Singers’ and ‘Two People Exchanging Saliva’ sharing the award.

The 2026 Oscars highlighted a diverse range of films and filmmakers, with both blockbuster productions and independent films receiving recognition on Hollywood’s biggest stage.

List of winners : https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/mar/15/oscars-2026-academy-awards-winners-full-list-live (VB news/ The Guardian)

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John Cena literally bared it all at the Oscars on Sunday.

The actor appeared on stage during the telecast to present the award for best costume design hilariously appearing to wear nothing at all.

No really, Cena appeared on the stage at the year’s most prestigious event in Hollywood… almost entirely naked.

The show’s host Jimmy Kimmel set up the bit by sharing a little bit of Oscars history, nodding to the 1974 Academy Awards when a streaker ran across the stage. Kimmel jokingly said, “Can you imagine if a nude man ran across the stage today? Wouldn’t that be crazy?”

From the corner of the stage, Cena peeked his head out and told Kimmel he didn’t want to “do the streaker bit anymore.”

“It’s an elegant event. Honestly, you should feel ashamed right now for suggesting such a tasteless idea,” Cena complained. “The male body is not a joke!”

Kimmel argued that Cena, who is also a famed WWE wrestler, wrestles in the nude. “Dude, I don’t wrestle naked,” Cena said. “I wrestle in jorts!”

“Jorts are worse than naked!” Kimmel said as the audience laughed.

At this point, Cena – carrying an oversized winner’s envelope over his private parts – walked to the center of the stage as the audience’s jaws dropped to the floor.

“Costumes, they are so important. Maybe the most important thing there is,” he said while presenting the award.

With an assist from Kimmel, who later wrapped Cena in a curtain leaving him much less exposed, they announced Holly Waddington as the best costume design Oscar winner for “Poor Things.”

While Cena appeared to have been naked on stage, a source with knowledge tells CNN that he “was covered in the groin and butt crack area – and the envelope was velcroed to him.”

The reason for the safety measures around Cena’s private parts? The show had to make sure there were no FCC violations, CNN understands.

Maybe now Oscar-winner Waddington can whip up something that Cena can wear to the afterparty. (CNN)

John Cena just walked on stage at the Oscar’s NAKED

The degradation of men continues.

Weak men. Hard times. pic.twitter.com/854Qltrt2R

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 11, 2024

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Universal’s “Oppenheimer” took home seven Academy Awards on Sunday, including best picture.

The Christopher Nolan-directed biopic about the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, earned best actor, best supporting actor, best film editing, best cinematography, best score and best director.

Disney and Searchlight’s “Poor Things” won four awards during the ceremony, including best actress, best makeup and hairstyling, best production design and best costume design.

Jimmy Kimmel hosted the 96th annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, moving the night along with biting comedic beats often aimed at past Oscars mishaps, including the accidental announcement of “La La Land” as best picture.

There was also a jab at the 50th anniversary of an Oscar streaker in the form of a nearly naked John Cena announcing the best costume award.

The following is a complete list of Oscar winners : 

Best picture
Oppenheimer

Best actor in a leading role
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

Best actress in a leading role
Emma Stone, Poor Things

Best director
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

Best supporting actor
Robert Downey Jr, Oppenheimer

Best supporting actress
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Best adapted screenplay
American Fiction

Best original screenplay
Anatomy of a Fall

Best animated featured film
The Boy and the Heron

Best animated short

War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko

Best international feature
The Zone of Interest, United Kingdom

Best documentary feature
20 Days in Mariupol

Best documentary short
The Last Repair Shop

Best original score
Oppenheimer

Best original song
What Was I Made For?, Barbie

Best sound
The Zone of Interest

Best production design
Poor Things

Best live action short
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Best cinematography
Oppenheimer

Best makeup and hairstyling
Poor Things

Best costume design
Poor Things

Best visual effects
Godzilla Minus One

Best film editing
Oppenheimer (CNBC/ Al Jazeera)

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Indian film “RRR” got its well-deserved moment in the Oscar spotlight on Sunday night when M.M. Keeravani’s song “Naatu Naatu” received the Academy Award for Best Original Song. 

The energetic musical number became a viral hit thanks to the electric duet performance from Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr, and excitement around the song only grew as the film slowly built a following out of streaming audiences from around the globe.

The award marks the culmination of “RRR” director S.S. Rajamouli’s long working relationship with Keeravani. Speaking to IndieWire, Rajamouli recalled the way that his relationship with his longtime composer made it easy to discuss the narrative context in which the song takes place to deliver a more impactful musical number.

“Bheem is being humiliated, he’s an innocent guy,” Rajamouli said. “He’s a great dancer, but he’s in a completely unfamiliar world. So, when Ram comes and helps him, I want the audience to feel their anger. They can’t fight because of the situation that they’re in, but I’m bringing this song which is supposed to give me the satisfaction of a fight. [Keeravani and I] had a lot of discussion on that.”

“RRR” was an immediate hit with audiences and critics when it opened in theaters in India, and quickly became an international phenomenon when it began streaming on Netflix last year.

“S.S. Rajamouli’s ‘RRR’ is a dazzling work of historical fiction — emphasis on the ‘fiction’ — that makes the moving image feel intimate and enormous all at once,” Siddhant Adlakha wrote in his IndieWire review. “A pulsating period action drama, it outshines even the director’s record-smashing ‘Baahubali’ movies (viewers familiar with them probably won’t know what to expect here) thanks to its mix of naked sincerity, unapologetic machismo, and balls-to-the-wall action craftsmanship. The film is playing on over a thousand screens in North America, and watching it with a packed audience familiar with Telugu-language cinema is likely to yield one of the noisiest and most raucous theatrical experiences imaginable. Plenty of recent releases have been hailed as ‘the return of cinema’ post-pandemic, but ‘RRR’ stands apart as an unabashed return to everything that makes the cinematic experience great, all at once.”

Part of the film’s overwhelming success can be attributed to the way it blended action and musical numbers in a way that was unfamiliar to most Western audiences. In a separate interview with IndieWire’s Eric Kohn, Rajamouli spoke about his love of dazzling audiences with spectacle-driven cinema.

“I always like to push the boundaries,” Rajamouli said. “You can create a fantastic spectacle if the characters have supernatural powers. That’s great to see onscreen, but for me, once the character has those powers, if the audience believes he can do anything, then there is no creative tension. I would like to make my characters real but the action over the top. To bridge that gap, I need to push the emotional drive of the characters. It has been proven that when a person is emotionally driven, he can do things that are beyond belief. We have heard so many stories about people doing unimaginable things when they need to. That’s what gives me the confidence to create really big action sequences that you know aren’t possible but believe the characters can go through them.”

The fusion of musical and action elements has been a hallmark of Rajamouli’s films to date. That could continue to be the case (the director is working on a musical adaptation of the Indian national epic the Mahabharata and is open to making an “RRR” sequel). But when asked if he’s obligated to include dance in his future projects, the filmmaker made it clear that he doesn’t feel pigeonholed as a musical director.

“There is no obligation,” he said. “When you start making a film, you select a storyline and a star cast. You understand what people are going to expect from this film. Let’s say Steven Spielberg is doing a movie with Kristen Stewart. Immediately audiences will have an expectation of what that’s going to be. If you reach that expectation, you will have a successful film. If you go beyond that expectation, then you’re going to have a blockbuster. If you don’t reach that expectation, you’re going to have a flat film. When I have a basic storytelling and the people who are going to act in the film, I also know that the audiences will expect songs. We have to make the most of it.” (IndieWire)

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