Sean Baker’s Anora was the big winner at the Academy Awards on Sunday evening, but literary adaptations held their own, with five films based on books taking home Oscars.
The Brazilian movie I’m Still Here won the award for international feature film. It’s based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir, which Charco Press will publish later this year in an English language edition translated by Daniel Hahn and Alison Entrekin.
Peter Straughan won the adapted screenplay award for Conclave, based on Robert Harris’ 2016 novel.
Wicked, the first installment of the movie musical based on Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, won for production design (Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales) and costume design (Paul Tazewell).
Emilia Pérez, based on director Jacques Audiard’s opera libretto, which was itself based on Boris Razon’s French language novel Écoute, won two Oscars: Zoe Saldaña in the supporting actress category, and “El Mal,” written by Clément Ducol, Camille, and Audiard, in the original song category.
Dune: Part Two, based on Frank Herbert’s Dune, also won two awards, for visual effects (Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe, and Gerd Nefzer) and sound (Gareth John, Richard King, Ron Bartlett, and Doug Hemphill).
Completely shut out of the awards was A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic based on Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties. The film had been nominated in eight categories, including best picture.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
