Barry Jenkins’ powerful coming-of-age story has won best picture, upsetting the heavily favored La La Land to pull off one of the most stunning victories in Academy Awards history.
Damien Chazelle’s La La Land had been expected to win Best Picture — and came in with 14 nominations, tied for the most ever, to Moonlight‘s eight — but Moonlight ultimately walked away with the top prize, along with a best supporting actor statuette for Mahershala Ali and best adapted screenplay.
Based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue and adapted for the screen by him and Jenkins, Moonlight unfolds over three chapters in the life of a young, gay black man growing up in a rough Miami neighborhood.
Chiron is played by three different actors over the course of the film (Alex R. Hibbert as a young boy, Ashton Sanders as a teen, and Trevante Rhodes as an adult), while the supporting cast includes Oscar nominee Naomie Harris as Chiron’s mother — who descends into drug addiction as the film progresses — and Ali a local dealer who becomes a father figure to the young Chiron.
“I think the beauty of making this film was the cast, the crew, all these elements come together to capture what the world is presenting us,” Jenkins told EW in an interview last year.
“Simply put, it was the best thing I’ve ever read,” Ali also said in October of reading Moonlight‘s script for the first time. “These are all people we grew up with but never had their space on camera…I remember just being so moved by how specifically these characters were all drawn, how unique the story was, and feeling like I knew these people.”
Moonlight was nominated in the Best Picture category alongside Arrival, Fences, Hidden Figures, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, La La Land, Lion, and Manchester by the Sea.
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HIDDEN FIGURES
The women of Hidden Figures aren’t hidden anymore.
Theodore Melfi’s inspiring drama about three real-life African-American female mathematicians whose work at NASA helped launch John Glenn into orbit has now rocketed to win Best Picture at the Oscars — the most shocking victory in Oscars’ history.
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The win comes as a surprise in a category where La La Land was strongly favored, but Hidden Figures surged forward as a strong contender and box-office favorite (it passed Damien Chazelle’s modern-day musical earlier this month to become the top-grossing Best Picture nominee of the year).
Based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s non-fiction book Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race and adapted for the screen by Melfi and Allison Schroeder, Hidden Figures starred Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae and Octavia Spencer as those three women — Katherine G. Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan, respectively. Spencer earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance, and the film was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
“To get to do a movie that shines light and illuminates something really good is like a dream,” Melfi told EW earlier this year.
Hidden Figures competed for Best Picture against Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hidden Figures, Lion, La La Land, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea and Hell or High Water.
Source: Yahoo News.
Source: Yahoo News.
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