Last night, Apple become the first streamer to win the Best Picture award at the Oscars award show. An English-language remake of the 2014 French film La Famille Bélier, "Coda" stars Emilia Jones as the only hearing member of a deaf family and features a mostly deaf cast. Other films nominated for Best Picture included Netflix’s The Power of the Dog, whose director, Jane Campion, was named best director.
Alongside the film, Ariana DeBose, and Troy Kotsur won in the best supporting acting categories for their performances in the films "West Side Story" and "CODA" respectively. Japanese feature "Drive My Car" also took home a prize, winning best international feature film, The Long Goodbye won best live-action short film and Belfast won best original screenplay.
The best feature documentary going went to Summer of Soul from director Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson. The doc was produced by Onyx Collective, Concorida Studio, Play/Action Pictures, LarryBilly Productions, Mass Distraction Media, RadicalMedia, and Vulcan Productions and chronicles the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Disney-owned Hulu picked up the doc in the US.
The most highlighted moment of the awards, however, was an altercation involving Will Smith and Chris Rock on stage after Rock made a comment about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Smith went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance as Venus and Serena Williams’ father Richard in the film "King Richard." As he accepted his award, he apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees during an emotional acceptance speech. The best actress award went to Jessica Chastain for her performance as Tammy Faye Bakker in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," based on the 2000 documentary of the same name by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato of "World of Wonder."