Documentary Winners Inject Political Messages into Oscar Night

Mr. Nobody Against Putin and All the Empty Rooms triumphed in the documentary categories at this year’s Academy Awards. The films won the Oscars for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short, respectively. Mr. Nobody Against Putin brought one of the night’s many surprises as it edged out frontrunner The Perfect Neighbor after becoming an underdog favourite.

Winners David Borenstein, Pavel Talankin, Helle Faber, and Alžběta Karásková accepted the award. Mr. Nobody Against Putin observes an act of defiance as Talankin chronicles the infiltration of propaganda into his school curriculum in Russia and refuses to brainwash his students with Putin’s ideology. “Mr. Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country,” said Borenstrin. “And what we saw when working with this footage, it’s that you lose it through countless small little acts of complicity. When we act complicit when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities. When we don’t say anything when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume it. We all face a moral choice. But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.”

Borenstein then turned the microphone over to Mr. Nobody himself as Talankin addressed the room via a translator. “For four years, we look at the sky for shooting stars to make a very important wish,” said Talankin. “But there are countries where instead of shooting stars, they have shooting bombs and shooting drones. In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now.”

The documentary shorts also injected some political gravitas to the Oscars broadcast. Winners Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones brought All the Empty Rooms subjects Steve Hartman and Gloria Cazares on stage in honour of their film, which observes Hartman’s photo project documenting the bedrooms of students killed in school shootings. “The empty rooms in our film belong to four young children who were all killed in school shootings: Hallie, Gracie, Dominic, and Jackie,” said Seftel.

Cazare then gave one of the night’s most powerful moments, saying, “My daughter Jackie was nine years old when she was killed in Uvalde. Since that day, her bedroom has been frozen in time. Jackie is more than just a headline. She is our light and our life. Gun violence is now the number one cause of death in kids and teens. We believe that if the world could see their empty bedrooms, we’d be a different America.” All the Empty Rooms is streaming on Netflix, while Mr. Nobody Against Putin is in select theatres.

The Oscars also delivered a big night for Canada, including the thirteenth win for the National Film Board. The NFB’s The Girl Who Cried Pearls won Best Animated Short for directors Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski. The stop-motion animation creates a stirring fable about a young man in Old Montreal who finds an unexpected road to riches. The duo thanked “the fantastic city of Montreal.”

Other shout-outs to Canada came in the wins for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein as Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau thanked their Toronto crew while accepting the Academy Award for Best Production Design. Vieau previously won in the category for del Toro’s The Shape of Water. Cliona Furey and Jordan Samuel scored Oscars for Make-up and Hairstyling, also for Frankenstein, while Sheridan grad Maggie Kang won Best Animated Feature for KPop Demon Hunters.

The big winner in the Oscars ceremony hosted by Conan O’Brien was Paul Thomas Anderson’s crime comedy One Battle After Another. It won six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Anderson, along with the inaugural award for Best Casting, which went to Cassandra Kulukundis. Sinners took four Oscars including Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, while Hamnet’s Jessie Buckley won Best Actress and Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for Weapons. The night also featured a historic tie, this time in the Best Live Action Short race as The Singers shared the award with Two People Exchanging Saliva. This marked the seventh tie in Oscar history.

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