89th Academy Award Winners: Moonlight Upsets La La La for Best Picture

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MOONLIGHT won the 2017 Oscar for Best Picture, one of its three wins of eight nominations. But it wasn’t met without a period of confusion as presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced La La Land as the winner. It turns out Beatty and Dunaway, who announced the winner, was given the wrong envelope and announced La La Land as the winner. After a few moments of the La La Land producers on stage giving their acceptance speeches, the proper envelope was produced with Moonlight‘s name on it and the cast, crew, and director of the correct Oscar-winning Best Picture came to the stage to accept their award. In the 89 years of the Academy Awards, this type of mistake has never happened before.Upon winning, director and Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins said “Even in my dreams, this could not be true. But to hell with dreams, I’m done with it.” Moonlight is the first completely gay-themed film to win Best Picture in the 89-year history of the Oscars.

Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) defied a 12-year statistic of the Screen Actors Guild in predicting Best Actor, winning here instead of SAG winner Denzel Washington (Fences).

Damien Chazelle (La La Land), at 32, became the youngest Best Director winner in Academy Awards history. With with Best Director, La La Land took home six Oscars including Best Actress for Emma Stone, Original Score and Song (for “City of Stars”) and Best Cinematography. One of only three films to earn 14 Oscar nominations, its win total falls in line with 1950’s All About Eve, which also won six.

Mahershala Ali won Supporting Actor for Moonlight. He is the first Muslim acting winner in Oscar history. Viola Davis (Fences) finished her perfect awards season with a win tonight in Best Supporting Actress.

Colleen Atwood (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) upset in Costume Design, her fourth Oscar win.

Kevin O’Connell won his first Oscar in 21 nominations, in Sound Mixing for Hacksaw Ridge.

The Salesman, directed by Asghar Farhadi, won the Foreign Language Film Oscar. The director chose to boycott the Oscars and in a statement said the he “stands in solidarity with the other nations” that a part of the President’s unlawful anti-Muslim country ban.

Moonlight won its second Oscar for Adapted Screenplay, going to its director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney. Kenneth Lonergan won Original Screenplay Manchester by the Sea, leaving the musical-winning-screenplay stat back in the 1950s.

Zootopia won the Animated Feature Oscar.

The full list of winners:

BEST PICTURE
Moonlight

BEST DIRECTOR
Damien Chazelle – La La Land

BEST ACTOR
Casey Affleck – Manchester By The Sea

BEST ACTRESS
Emma Stone – La La Land

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Mahershala Ali – Moonlight

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Viola Davis – Fences

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Moonlight

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Manchester By The Sea

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Zootopia

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
OJ: Made In America

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Salesman – Iran

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
La La Land

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them

BEST FILM EDITING
Hacksaw Ridge

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
Suicide Squad

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
La La Land

BEST SOUND EDITING
Arrival

BEST SOUND MIXING
Hacksaw Ridge

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
The Jungle Book

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
La La Land

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
City Of Stars – La La Land

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Piper

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The White Helmets

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
Sing

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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