The Academy Awards were held Sunday night, honoring the best films and filmmakers of the past year.

By Girindra Selleck
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Sunday night’s Academy Awards were one of the most politically charged in recent memory. The ceremony, hosted by returning MC Chris Rock, saw nominees and presenters alike address a series of issues including diversity in Hollywood, racism, climate change, and sexual abuse, among others.

Going into the night, the Best Actor and Actress awards — typically some of the hardest to predict — were all but guaranteed to Leonardo DiCaprio and Brie Larson, respectively. Indeed, they both did win. Larson picked up her award for the role of “Ma” in Room. DiCaprio finally won his statuette for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant.

Iñárritu also won for Best Director, and The Revenant’s cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki picked up his third award in as many years for his work on the film.

The ceremonies, which fell under scrutiny for cutting performances of Sumi Jo and David Lang’s “Simple Song #3” from Youth and “Manta Ray” performed by Anohni from the documentary Racing Extinction (an Asian woman and a trans woman, respectively), attempted to make up for the loss with a politically charged performance of “Till It Happens to You,” a song about sexual assault by Lady Gaga.

All three, who were up for the award of best original song, along with 50 Shades of Grey’s “Earned It” by the Weeknd, lost to Sam Smith’s critically maligned “The Writing’s On the Wall” from Spectre.

Most of the technical awards, including sound, editing, design, and makeup went to Geroge Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. One exception was the award for visual effects. In an upset, it went to Ex Machina, which starred Oscar Isaac, Domnhall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander.

Vikander herself won the Best Supporting Actress award for her work in The Danish Girl, while Best Supporting Actor went to veteran stage actor and first-time nominee Mark Rylance for his turn in Steven Spielberg and the Coen Brothers’ Bridge of Spies.

The night’s most coveted trophy, the Academy Award for Best Picture, went to Tom McCarthy’s journalistic drama Spotlight, which boasted an all-star cast of Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci.

The win for Spotlight — adapted from the true story of a team of journalists at the Boston Globe that exposed thousands of cases of child sex abuse by church officials in the city — put the punctuation on a night filled with statements about today’s most pressing social issues.

Rock was particularly pointed in his routine, making repeated jabs at both the academy and the media for the handling of this year’s famous #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Rock came out the gate swinging — and connecting — and ended the show appropriately, playing Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.”

Here are the winners in some of the night’s biggest categories:

Best picture: Spotlight

Best director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, The Revenant

Best actress: Brie Larson, Room

Best actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Best supporting actor: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

Best supporting actress: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Best original screenplay: Spotlight

Best adapted screenplay: The Big Short

Best foreign film: Son of Saul

Best documentary feature: Amy

Best animated feature: Inside Out

Best cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, The Revenant