Culture

At least nine people have been arrested following the stampede, including police officers and ministry employees.

Haiti has begun three days of national mourning, following a deadly stampede at the Citadelle Laferriere in the northern part of the country.

At least 25 people were killed in the crush that formed at the entrance of the popular tourist site on Saturday, with some visitors pressing to exit while others pushed to enter.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Culture and Communication announced that two government officials were fired in the aftermath of the stampede.

One, a director with the Institute for the Preservation of National Heritage, was accused of “serious negligence”. The other, who served in the Ministry of Culture and Communication, was criticised for “biased passivity”.

“The Ministry of Culture and Communication, without going into the details of the criminal investigation, believes that the tragedy at La Citadelle is the result of administrative negligence,” it said in a statement.

The government, it added, “will fully assume its responsibilities”, as the event “must outrage the public conscience”.

The tragedy marks one of several crises the Haitian government is facing as it approaches its first round of general elections later this year.

Already, nine suspects have been arrested in connection with the deadly stampede, including five police officers and two employees from the Institute for the Preservation of National Heritage.

The crush of people took place as a local DJ held an event at the citadel, a 19th-century fortress commissioned after the Haitian Revolution, when Haiti’s enslaved population overthrew French colonial rule.

Since its construction, the citadel has become a symbol of Haitian sovereignty.

But the stampede on Saturday was exacerbated by stormy weather conditions, as rain pummelled northern Haiti and participants at the event ran for cover.

Elsewhere in the country, approximately 12 people died due to the heavy downpours, and at least 900 homes and one hospital have been flooded.

The Haitian government has also been grappling with the threat of gang violence, particularly since the assassination of then-President Jovenel Moise in 2021.

His death left a power vacuum in the government that criminal networks have sought to exploit. Federal elections have been repeatedly postponed for much of the last decade.

Earlier this month, a United Nations-backed Gang Suppression Force began to arrive in the country to help address the violence.

From March 2025 through mid-January of this year, the UN has counted at least 5,519 gang-related deaths in Haiti. Roughly 16,000 people have been killed since 2022, and more than 1.5 million have been displaced.

Authorities called for more aid on Tuesday, as the violence continued. In the Marigot commune, seven people were killed and a police station was burned in an overnight gang attack.

Marigot Mayor Rene Danneau described the victims as informants who helped the police. He called on Haiti’s government to step in.

“We are asking the prime minister to take all necessary measures,” he told Radio Television Caraibes.

Sabrina Carpenter has apologized after sparking backlash for mistaking a Coachella fan’s traditional Arabic cheer for yodeling, which she described as “weird.”

The Grammy winner was performing her first headlining show at Coachella on Friday night when an audience member suddenly let out a high-pitched cry called a zaghrouta.

“My apologies i didn’t see this person with my eyes and couldn’t hear clearly,” Carpenter wrote Saturday on X. “My reaction was pure confusion, sarcasm and not ill intended. Could have handled it better!”

She continued: “Now i know what a Zaghrouta is! I welcome all cheers and yodels from here on out.”

What happened?

The misunderstanding took place between songs. As applause for her previous number, “Please, Please, Please,” faded and Carpenter sat down at the piano for her next number, someone in the crowd suddenly let out a loud trill.

“I think I heard someone yodel,” Carpenter said into the microphone. “Is that what you’re doing? I don’t like it.”

“It’s my culture,” a voice from the audience shouted.

“That’s your culture … is yodeling?” Carpenter responded with a quizzical frown.

“It’s a call, it’s a call of celebration,” the audience member could be heard saying.

“Is this Burning Man? What’s going on? This is weird,” Carpenter replied, before continuing her next song,“We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night.” It was the singer’s first live performance of the single from her new album, “Man’s Best Friend.”

What was the public response?

Carpenter made the public statement after an online uproar. Her apology on X was a quote reply to a post calling her reaction to the fan’s cheer “insensitive and Islamophobic.”

The singer was “mad disrespectful for mocking the zaghrouta,” wrote another X user. “What’s worse is the blatant racism that followed and the laughs of the audience,” they continued.

Carpenter’s apology was generally well-received online, with some fans thanking her for taking accountability. Carpenter’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Carpenter has gone from a child actor known for her role as Maya on Disney’s “Girl Meets World” to pop stardom in the past few years. During her debut at Coachella in 2024, she vowed to return as a headliner. Her Coachella show on Friday was an elaborate Hollywood-themed production — dubbed “Sabrinawood” — packed with references to classic movies, including a dance from 1987’s “Dirty Dancing,” and celebrity cameos.

What is a zaghrouta?

A zaghrouta is a loud, rhythmic sound made by quickly moving the tongue while letting out a high-pitched cry.

Shakira, who was born and raised in Colombia and has Lebanese roots, previously made headlines in 2020 for letting out a zaghrouta during the Super Bowl LIV halftime show.

Nesreen Akhtarkhavari, an associate professor and director of Arabic studies at DePaul University in Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune at the time that the ululation is a Middle Eastern expression of joy made during weddings, sporting events and protests.

Coachella is never cheap, much less this year’s sold-out edition with the long-awaited live return of Justin Bieber. But if you’re looking to score a last-minute pass, you likely lost your swag when you saw the resale prices on secondary sites like StubHub.

As of Friday afternoon, you’ll pay between $4,000 and $5,000 for a sold-out weekend one GA pass on StubHub. (Prices are lower for weekend two on Coachella’s official resale site. Weekend one tickets originally retailed for $649).

“That’s insane,” said California Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), who has introduced AB 1720, the California Fans First Act, to combat extortionate ticket re-selling. Haney’s bill would ban reselling tickets at more than 10% above face value in California.

“We’ve allowed live events including Coachella to be dominated by speculators who aren’t fans, but who simply want to profit off these events,” he continued. “They didn’t contribute to Coachella, they don’t play an instrument. They’re using events as a way to screw over fans and jack up prices. The result is that people who are Justin Bieber fans pay eight or nine times over the face value of a ticket.”

The proposal comes as the U.S. Department of Justice recently announced a settlement with Live Nation in a federal suit that will allow it to keep control of Ticketmaster. Many states, including California, are looking at options to pursue their own legal action and legislation to fix a ticket market fans have come to see as deeply broken.

Coachella, produced by Goldenvoice and AEG, isn’t affiliated with Live Nation or Ticketmaster. But eye-watering secondary market prices are an example of how desirable concerts have become a hot commodity for predatory resellers.

“We’ve got to break up [Live Nation’s] monopoly, but there is a problem with the secondary market and the ways we’ve allowed scalpers to crowd out fans. That exists on all platforms,” Haney said. “We’ve got to address monopolies and ridiculous fees in direct ticket sales, but we also can’t allow scalpers to buy up tickets to profit off the art of others. I have no doubt that if we didn’t allow gambling on ticket prices, there would still be Coachella tickets available for fans.”

The issue of high concert prices is multifaceted, and artists and promoters play more of a role than many fans want to believe. The technology exists for many tours to do what Haney’s bill proposes — cap resale prices — on their own. Fans clearly are willing to pay extremely high prices for in-demand performances like Coachella.

“If people are willing to pay a lot to see a performance,” Haney said, “Those dollars should go to the artist, to folks who work at the event. If demand is high, tickets may be expensive, but we shouldn’t allow scalpers to create scarcity and higher prices.”

If the California Fans First Act were to pass (it’s still working through the Assembly) it would bring the state‘s ticket market more in line with many European countries that already ban exorbitant resale practices. Other states like New York are considering similar legislation, and in the absence of federal action to address issues in the ticket market, state legislation may be the next best option.

Haney hopes California — a state whose cultural identity and economy is deeply tied to live music — can lead on that front.

“There is no California without creators and culture and music,” he said. “It’s the heart and soul of who we are, it’s a massive part of our economy and part of our culture. We have to make sure creators can receive the support for their art, and that fans have the opportunity to experience it. Right now, we’re losing on both fronts. There’s an urgency for this legislation here more than anywhere because of how central it is to who we are.”

One of L.A.’s most unique art galleries is closing up shop.

Gallery 1988, which opened in 2004 and proclaimed itself “the first pop culture-focused art gallery in the world,” will cease operations at the end of April. In a post on Instagram, gallery owner Katie Sutton said that while the gallery had been forced to close its physical space on Melrose a few years back, she had “really tried to keep things going [online], especially for our amazing artists.” Unfortunately, she wrote, “the [art] market is the worst I’ve seen it in over two decades,” and the decision to close became inevitable.

A launching pad for artists whose work paid tribute to television, film, video games and more, Gallery 1988 was renowned for shows like the annual “Crazy 4 Cult,” which showcased pieces celebrating underground classics from across the entertainment space. It also specialized in single-focus shows like “Weird Al,” which celebrated the career of the oddball recording artist “Weird Al” Yankovic, and “You’re the Very Best, Like No One Ever Was,” which paid tribute to the world of Pokémon.

Exhibitions at Gallery 1988, which is closing after 20 years, often featured lines around the block, with fans who camped out for a chance to score a prized piece.

(Courtesy of Gallery 1988)

Perhaps most famously, the gallery collaborated with studios to create art-focused campaigns around properties such as “The Avengers” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” while also launching solo shows from artists like Scott C, Luke Chueh and Tom Whalen.

Gallery 1988 was renowned for selling work that ranged in price from $10 into the thousands, enabling customers from around the world to buy pieces that spoke to them, whether a postcard-sized digital print or a large oil-on-canvas painting.

A number of other galleries have closed in recent months across Los Angeles, including Blum, Nino Mier Gallery, Clearing, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and L.A. Louver. Sutton says that she’s heard through the gallery grapevine that “even galleries that haven’t closed are struggling,” adding that “it’s a hard time for everybody.”

Though there’s never one reason a business closes, some industry observers and art fans have cited the rise in AI-generated content potentially devaluing original art overall. It’s especially true in the pop culture space, with consumer activity down not just at places like Gallery 1988 but also at events such as WonderCon in Anaheim, where artists could often expect to make a good chunk of change.

Jensen Karp, who co-founded Gallery 1988 with Sutton but stepped back after a health scare nearly two years ago, says that while he certainly sees a “malaise in culture because of AI” that’s indicative of the population “losing the understanding of what true art is,” he wouldn’t attribute the collapse of Gallery 1988 solely to that one thing.

Kristin Tercek “Rejoice” 2015 for the “Force Awakens” show with Disney, LucasFilm and Unicef at Gallery 1988.

(© Kristin Tercek / courtesy of Gallery 1988)

“Our customer base was the people who looked up release dates and who went to the Arclight, and that sense of community is just not there anymore post-pandemic,” Karp says. With the entertainment industry struggling in L.A. as well, that means less disposable income floating around for things like art — especially from the kinds of people who might be inclined to buy a portrait of, say, Steve Martin in the movie “The Jerk.”

Greg Simkins, a California based artist who often sold through Gallery 1988 under the name “CRAOLA,” says he’s felt the impact of the entertainment industry’s contraction firsthand. “People like directors, producers and actors were some of our biggest clients,” Simkins says. “All of the sudden they’re leaving, going to places like Atlanta and Canada. AI is screwing up the movie industry too, and those are the kinds of people who had expendable money to buy original art so it trickles down.”

It doesn’t help that there’s more pop culture-centered art floating around now, and not just on sites like Instagram and Etsy. Though Gallery 1988 was a frontrunner in celebrating popular culture through art when it opened, even hosting a “Rick and Morty”-themed show before the Adult Swim series had a lick of merchandise, it also became a proof of concept for companies including Disney and Netflix, which have started selling their own artist-created material inspired by their properties.

And with Hollywood releasing fewer movies into theaters, the base of what Gallery 1988 artists could pay tribute to also began to contract. Frequent gallery contributor Whalen says that when Gallery 1988 opened, it was filling a niche and “creating fresh content for movies that spoke to” people in their 20s and 30s. Over time, though, art that celebrated properties like “Ghostbusters,” “Back to the Future” and “The Goonies” started to overwhelm the market, causing “a lot of the 1970s and ‘80s movies to become stale,” Whalen says.

Scott C’s “Breaking Bad Upon the Mount,” 2012, for the “Breaking Bad Art Project: With Sony and Vince Gilligan” at Gallery 1988.

(© Scott C. / courtesy of Gallery 1988)

While Sutton and Karp both say they’re beyond grateful that they got to open Gallery 1988 in the first place, let alone keep it open for more than 20 years, they’re worried about what closing the gallery will mean to some of their contributing artists.

“There are so many incredible artists out there and there are so many more places for them to show their work now and that’s amazing,” Sutton says. “But with that bombardment of media from everywhere, it’s hard to really see stuff because it’s coming at you from all directions. So many artists are out there trying to make a living and support their families and that’s just becoming harder and harder.”

“So many of the artists we showed never expected to have an art gallery email them,” Karp says. “I’m so proud of all the artists we worked with and what we were able to do, but I also know that [Gallery 1988 shutting down] closes up an avenue for all of them too and that sucks.”

The “Cultural Re-existence” column will provide insights into how our ancestral practices, habits, customs, and traditions remain alive today because Venezuelans preserve them through the human spirit they embody and amplify. These are expressions of women and men grounded in reality, history, and a consciousness of their subjective revolutionary role, as well as their responsibility and commitment to defending life.

March, in addition to being the month honoring women, is a month of celebration centered on Venezuela’s most widespread traditional rhythm: joropo. (1) And although this is a community tradition with unique variations throughout Venezuela, on March 19 the town of Elorza in Apure state hosts a ten-day festival that draws thousands of people from all over Venezuela and other countries, to participate and enjoy concerts until dawn, joropo llanero singing and dancing contests, sports and recreational activities linked to the Llano culture, as well as culinary and artisan fairs. Another iconic date this month is March 15, since in 2014 the Bolivarian government declared “Traditional Venezuelan Joropo in All its Diversity” to be part of the nation’s cultural heritage. From that moment, this date has been commemorated as National Joropo Day.

As a community-based festival, the Venezuelan joropo in its various forms—in the eastern, north-central coastal, llanos, western, and Andean regions—has seen Venezuelan women become committed cultural creators who are conscious of their community’s identity, the very identity that has allowed them to endure since colonial times, keeping alive the feelings, thoughts, and actions that extend beyond their own lives, into the lives of their children and grandchildren. 

Venezuelan women, as practitioners of the various joropos, have had to fight—as women and as joropo creators—against the Inquisition, the nation-state, and the cultural industry for their right to exist. It is well known that these institutions demonized them for “disturbing devotion,” and even today they compel them to adopt a masculinized representation of their own identity or impose the sexualization of their aesthetic expression. There is a historical debt to acknowledge the heroic insurgency that the practice, creation, and celebration of the various Venezuelan joropos have meant for the Venezuelan people, and this debt is owed primarily to the joroperas [female joropo practitioners] for their unrelenting commitment to our identities, even during the most complex moments of our history as an insurgent people.

For these reasons, we wanted to inaugurate our column with the perspective that Venezuelan women have on this popular community festival. Through Fabiola José, we were invited to the 3rd “Mujer Joropo” (Joropo Women) Gathering, held in honor of singer Cecilia Todd and dancer María Ruíz. This was our cue to attend the “Joropazo” organized at the San Carlos Barracks in Caracas on March 15, and to participate as singers and spectators in this gathering of women, an artistic-cultural initiative that brought together singers, dancers, and musicians of all ages, with repertoires integrating both the traditional music and dances of our communities and more contemporary musical and choreographic expressions that speak to multigenerational dialogue and the enduring relevance of this popular art form.

Honoring women’s role in joropo

Carolina Veracierta is the organizer of Mujer Joropo. A dancer, writer, designer, and singer, she explained to us that the project “focuses on women not just in a supporting role but as a protagonist, a creator, and carrier of ancestral knowledge.”

“For me, the joropo isn’t just a musical genre or a dance; it’s the language through which my body and my voice express my very essence. It’s the echo of my childhood in Monagas state and the strength that has sustained me on stages far away,” she explained. “When I dance the joropo, I don’t just move my feet; I shake off my sorrows, celebrate my victories, and honor the women who, before me, kept the rhythm in their skirts and in their songs to accompany the milking of cows.”

Asked about the importance of an event featuring women exclusively, Veracierta argued that joropo has historically had “a very masculine narrative” but that women have always been present, “sustaining the rhythm and in tandem with the man’s foot-stomping.”

“Celebrating it among women is an act of sorority and empowerment,” she concluded. “Joropo has the soul of a woman.”

Amaranta Pérez, another artist featured in the event, told us that joropo brings her an immediate jolt of happiness. “It takes me back to my family’s roots between Parmana and Valle de la Pascua [Guárico state], it is a sort of therapy,” she said. “I especially cherish the lyrics that express the love for our people, landscapes, history, and the folk tales from our wonderful authors that are turned into songs.”

Amaranta defended the importance of events like Mujer Joropo to help correct women’s “unequal” participation in the artistic sphere.

For her part, singer, professor, and bassoonist Luisana Pérez affirmed that “joropo for me is synonymous with Venezuela, from its history to the yellow, blue, red and eight stars that make up the national flag.”

Concerning Mujer Joropo, Luisana explained that “it was unusual to see women playing the mandolin, the harp, or the cuatro” and that these kinds of events “are a beautiful way to reclaim the role played by women in joropo.”

More than 20 artists participated in this third edition of Mujer Joropo, demonstrating the commitment of contemporary Venezuelan women to their own history, to the artistic legacy of their ancestors, and to the responsibility of preserving and promoting the heritage they now hold.

From underground communal festivity to national identity manufactured by the music industry

On April 10, 1749, the governor and captain general of Venezuela, Don Luis Francisco de Castellanos, published what may be the first documented reference to the joropo. He did so in the form of a decree banning the Xoropo Escobillado, “…due to its extreme movements, insolence, heel-stomping, and other indecencies, it has been frowned upon by some people of sound mind…”. The official decided to consult the Royal Audience on this matter, likely due to widespread controversy, and in the meantime, warned that those who violated the ban would face public scrutiny plus two years of imprisonment, and women would be “…confined to hospitals for an equal period…”.

Although this is the first formal ban to explicitly name joropo, we cannot overlook the fact that, as early as 1532, the Catholic Church’s published constitutions regulated and prohibited popular festivals in general, especially those where the music and dances of Mulatto, Black, and Indigenous women “…disturb devotion…,” or where both sexes mingle in dance, or those where the veneration of saints was a pretext for throwing a party. 

If we consider that there is evidence that the first vihuelas [medieval Spanish string instrument] arrived in 1529 in the territory we now call Venezuela, and if we acknowledge the express order of the Catholic Monarchs to ship instruments and musicians starting with Columbus’s second voyage (1493), we could infer that between these dates and Governor Castellanos’s ban, there were some 220–250 years of incubation for what would eventually become an irreversible trend in popular culture, which the colonial order had no choice but to accept.

Although the term xoropo has been interpreted as coming from Arabic as jarabe ( شراب , sharab), for the Andalusian researcher, poet, and musician Antonio Manuel Rodríguez Ramos, the root is undoubtedly that of drinking ( شرب , shurib), and he explains that initially, this is how the festival of drinking, singing, dancing, and eating might have been called. And the fact is that drinking –alcohol– was the best way for converts to avoid suspicion from the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which was formally operational in our country between 1610 and 1821.

Related to other rhythms including fandangos, jácaras, folías, jarabes, and sones, Venezuelan joropos were documented in the independence struggle that led Bolívar’s armies as far as Peru during the nineteenth century. In the mid-twentieth century, one of these joropos, the llanero, was established as the national music style and dance, though it was a version that had certainly lost its communal and rustic character. By then, the music industry, aware of the deep roots these sounds had in Venezuelans, marketed a series of commercial products featuring music, lyrics, and singers stylized to fit institutional, urban, and bourgeois tastes.

As we noted above, on March 15, 2014, the Venezuelan government declared “Traditional Venezuelan Joropo in All its Diversity” as part of the nation’s cultural heritage, recognizing it as an element of identity and unity –not only in many of our festivities and collective expressions throughout the country, but also as a collective process of community organization. The declaration of the diversity of joropos as cultural heritage was the result of a series of debates that took place both within the community of cultural workers and among research specialists.

With the same strategy of asserting the joropo not only as a dance but as a complex cultural system that integrates music, song, dance, poetry, and oral traditions passed down through generations, Venezuela proposed to the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage that the Venezuelan joropo be included on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The committee approved the proposal on December 9, 2025.

Venezuelan joropos thus allow people to come together and reclaim their humanity through the recognition of their own dignity. Through parrandas, festivals for singing, dancing, eating, and drinking, joropo expresses a communal setting where agriculture, cattle rearing, and fishing were the means of sustaining life. Persecuted by the colonial order, homogenized by the nation-state, and commercialized by the music industry through jingle-franchise schemes, Venezuelan joropos also survived the journey from the rural countryside to the oil-driven urban environments.

This continuous history of persecution, denial, whitewashing, and normalization has actually pushed joropo women and men to sneak away, resonate, hold firm, reinvent themselves, and stand out in a permanent process of self-consciousness, recognition, and realization. It is not merely a connection to the land, to love, to our mothers, but to the dream of living in a free land, and the will to produce a cultural liberation project.

Note

(1) With a myriad of local expressions, joropo is the most widespread traditional rhythm in Venezuela. Its execution typically features at least one singer, maracas as percussion, the Venezuelan cuatro [four-stringed instrument], and other string instruments such as the harp or the mandolin. The most well-known variations are the joropo llanero, from the plains region, joropo oriental from the eastern coastal areas and Margarita island, and joropo central from Miranda and Aragua states in the center of the country. Listen to the songs above for examples.

Fabiola José is a Venezuelan singer. She has performed in countries across South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Her singles and albums are available on all digital platforms. She hosted and produced “Cantante y Sonante” for Radio Nacional de Venezuela. In 2018–2019, she created a series of videos for social media, published on her YouTube channel #HechoEnCasa. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Music from IUDEM, Caracas (2005); specialized under Maestro Tom Krause in Spain (2007); and an M.A. in Arts and Cultures of the South from UNEARTE, Venezuela (2020).

Fidel Barbarito is a Venezuelan musician and researcher, with a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music and history, respectively. He teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs at the National Experimental University of the Arts (UNEARTE). Together with Fabiola José, he promotes several musical projects aimed at disseminating traditional folk repertoires, integrating them with contemporary compositions inspired by these sounds. Joropo llanero. Parranda de reexistencia is one of his published essays.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

When you think of your earliest memory of reality television, what comes to mind? Is it “The Real World,” “Survivor” or “The Bachelor”? Perhaps it’s other fare like “Project Runway” or one of the “Real Housewives” franchises.

Growing up in the ‘90s and early aughts, my first exposure to reality programming was MTV’s slate of shows like “Real World” and “Road Rules” — thanks to being the youngest of four siblings, I was exposed to shows that were, in hindsight, too risque for me at too young an age. But they left an indelible mark. I saw Irene McGee of “Real World: Seattle” get slapped by her roommate Stephen Williams, a moment that at the time sent shock waves. Genesis Moss, of the Boston cast, was one of my earliest exposures to a gay person on TV. And Melissa Howard of the New Orleans season showed me how you can be 5-foot-2 and unapologetically feisty — as someone with a similar build and demeanor, I took that to heart.

Over the years, I’ve sometimes dismissed reality TV because it felt a little too personal or a little too competitive. I often wonder about the psychological effect on participants as their lives are laid bare for all to see. However, I can’t deny their appeal and why fans have continued to gravitate toward these shows season after season. They make for excellent watercooler talk; in recent weeks, my co-workers and I have spoken endlessly about “The Bachelorette” and Taylor Frankie Paul, and who did or didn’t stay married from Season 10 of “Love Is Blind.”

Few of us knew in the early days what effect reality television would have on the culture or how it would create a new type of star. Reality TV personalities have become influencers, pop culture icons and even political figures. One is the president.

And many shows have not only endured, they’ve spawned universes, international adaptations and spinoffs. Bravo, a TV channel that used to focus on the performing arts, is now an unscripted powerhouse that even has its own convention, BravoCon, where its various universes come together in service of fans.

What does that say about us as viewers? There’s always been a fascination with peering into the lives of others, seeing how they react to everyday problems under the glare of a camera. Perhaps it is a way to deflect from the reality of our own lives, which under the guise of normalcy is straining with the weight of political upheaval and economic turmoil, not to mention personal strife. Seeing someone else onscreen deal with their reality is sometimes the best escape.

So like it or not, reality television is here to stay.

Oscar winner Pavel Talankin called for ‘an end to all wars’ as he received the best documentary award for “Mr Nobody Against Putin”.

One Battle After Another was the big winner of the 98th Academy Awards, taking home six Oscars.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s black comedy about a has-been revolutionary won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Editing, and Best Casting.

Sinners, which entered the ceremony with a record 16 nominations, was the second-biggest winner of the night, with four awards.

Michael B Jordan earned Best Actor for his leading role, while director Ryan Coogler picked up his first Oscar for Original Screenplay.

In the acting categories, Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for Hamnet, marking her first Academy Award, while Amy Madigan was recognised as Best Supporting Actress for Weapons.

Elsewhere, the South Korean musical fantasy KPop Demon Hunters won two Oscars, while Frankenstein also secured two awards.

Here is the full list of winners:

Best Picture
One Battle After Another 

Best Actress
Jessie Buckley, Hamnet

Best Actor
Michael B Jordan, Sinners

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Madigan, Weapons

Best Supporting Actor
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another

Best director
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another

Best Original Score
Ludwig Göransson, Sinners 

Best Animated Film
KPop Demon Hunters

Best International Feature
Sentimental Value

Best Documentary Feature
Mr Nobody Against Putin

Best Casting
Cassandra Kulukundis, One Battle After Another

Best Sound
Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A Rizzo and Juan Peralta, F1

Best Original Screenplay
Ryan Coogler, Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another

Best Documentary Short
All the Empty Rooms  

Best Live Action Short Film
The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva (tie)

Best animated short film
The Girl Who Cried Pearls

Best Music (Original Song):
EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo and Teddy Park for Golden, KPop Demon Hunters

Best Film Editing:
Andy Jurgensen, One Battle After Another

Best Cinematography:
Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Sinners

Best Production Design:
Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau, Frankenstein

Best Costume Design
Kate Hawley, Frankenstein

Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey, Frankenstein

Best Visual Effects
Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett, Avatar: Fire and Ash

As anticipated, it ended up being One Battle After Another’s night at the 98th annual Academy Awards, with the political thriller carting away six Oscars out of a total of 13 nominations.

But while Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus continued its march towards award-season domination, there were moments of genuine surprise and subversion in Sunday’s ceremony.

Some of those moments had to do with the current political climate in the United States.

Host Conan O’Brien and his fellow presenters deftly avoided mentioning President Donald Trump by name, but their barbs took direct aim at his policies since returning to office.

Other surprises came from within the filmmaking community itself. For only the seventh time in Oscar history, a tie was announced: Two films had gotten an equal number of votes for Best Live Action Short.

As a result, both the surrealist thriller Two People Exchanging Saliva and the moody bar-room drama The Singers shared the Academy Award.

Here are six key takeaways from the night.

A two-horse race between Sinners and One Battle

The vampire film Sinners came into Sunday night’s ceremony with a record 16 Oscar nominations. But the big question of the night was: How many nods could it actually convert into wins?

Its biggest competition was, of course, Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which had the second highest tally of nominations.

Sinners director Ryan Coogler and Anderson were in direct competition in several top categories, including Best Picture and Best Director.

In both cases, Anderson came out ahead, though he acknowledged how fickle such awards can be.

“ I just want to say that, in 1975, the Oscar nominees for Best Picture were Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Nashville and Barry Lyndon,” the four-time Best Director nominee said, listing films now considered to be Hollywood classics.

“There is no best among them. There is just what the mood might be that day.”

In the categories for Best Supporting Actor and Best Film Editing, One Battle After Another also triumphed, as well as for the inaugural award for Best Casting.

But in a sign of how well matched their two films were, both Coogler and Anderson emerged from the night with writing Oscars.

Anderson picked up Best Adapted Screenplay award for his use of the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, while Coogler made off with the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Sinners, a work inspired by his uncle’s love of the blues.

Jordan dunks on Chalamet in Best Actor race

Sinners, which won four Academy Awards overall, earned some of the most emotional, nail-biting victories of the night.

In the Best Cinematography category, for instance, Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to top the field.

It was her first nomination and first win, with Arkapaw besting veteran cinematographers like Marty Supreme’s Darius Khondji and Frankenstein’s Dan Laustsen, both multiple nominees.

Another big win for Sinners came in the form of Michael B Jordan, the actor whom Coogler has cast in every film since his directorial breakout in 2013’s Fruitvale Station.

Jordan, 39, was in a tight race for Best Actor with another young performer, 30-year-old Timothee Chalamet of the 1950s ping-pong drama Marty Supreme.

But Chalamet’s aggressive campaigning may have ultimately sabotaged his prospects. Multiple cracks were taken throughout the night at Chalamet’s recent comments disparaging opera and ballet.

“Nobody cares anymore” about either art form, Chalamet said in an interview last month.

“We can change society through art, through creativity, through theatre and ballet and also cinema,” director Alexandre Singh said pointedly during his acceptance speech for Best Live Action Short.

O’Brien, meanwhile, acknowledged the backlash with a joke about heightened security at the night’s Oscar ceremony.

“I’m told there are concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities,” O’Brien said, before turning to Chalamet. “They’re just mad you left out jazz.”

A conga line of snubs

Given the dominant performances from Sinners and One Battle After Another, plenty of critically acclaimed films left empty-handed, or nearly so.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, as expected, earned three wins in technical categories, including Best Production Design, Best Costumes and Best Hairstyling and Makeup.

Netflix’s smash hit KPop Demon Hunters, meanwhile, also fulfilled expectations that it would dominate in its categories, Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.

But then there were former frontrunners like Hamnet that failed to generate much traction, including for director Chloe Zhao, a past Oscar winner. Out of eight nominations total, it only came away with one win: a Best Actress trophy for Irish performer Jessie Buckley.

Marty Supreme and the Brazilian film The Secret Agent fared worse, however. Despite having nine nominations and being considered an early shoo-in for Best Actor, Marty Supreme scored no wins.

The Secret Agent, which swept the Best Actor and Best Director categories at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, also earned nothing at this year’s Oscars.

Same was true for the quirky kidnapping drama Bugonia, from Oscar darling Yorgos Lanthimos.

Fears about artificial intelligence

The ceremony, however, did occasionally veer away from the competition between the films to discuss issues facing the film industry and the country as a whole.

Among those was the creeping growth of artificial intelligence (AI) in the creative sector.

In the weeks leading up to the 98th Oscars, an AI-generated video clip had gone viral, appearing to show Hollywood icons Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in a rooftop brawl worthy of a James Bond movie.

The clip had been generated through AI software developed by the Chinese firm ByteDance, and Hollywood leaders quickly denounced it as a threat to their livelihood, not to mention a copyright infringement.

Those concerns reverberated on the Oscar stage on Sunday, with O’Brien and others addressing the growing use of AI.

“Tonight we are celebrating people, not AI, because animation – it’s more than a prompt,” actor Will Arnett said emphatically as he introduced the animation awards.

O’Brien, meanwhile, joked that, by next year, his hosting gig would be taken by “a Waymo in a tux”.

Trump skewered for threatening free speech

Another concern looming over the night’s Oscar ceremony came in the form of President Donald Trump, who has courted controversy by launching deadly military attacks in Venezuela and Iran, as well as leading a violent immigration crackdown in the US.

At no point was Trump mentioned by name. But his leadership was alluded to throughout the night.

O’Brien, the host, set the tone early on with his oblique jabs at the Republican president in his opening monologue.

“When I hosted last year, Los Angeles was on fire,” the two-time Oscar emcee said in remarks dripping with sarcasm. “But this year, everything’s going great.”

Fellow comedian Jimmy Kimmel was even more direct. Last September, his show was briefly suspended after Trump criticised the comedian.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission, a Trump appointee, subsequently threatened the broadcasting license of the TV channel Kimmel performs on.

“There are some countries whose leaders don’t support free speech. I’m not at liberty to say which. Let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS,” Kimmel quipped, referring to another channel that cancelled a fellow late-night comedy show.

Several filmmakers honoured at the Oscars likewise waded into the controversies surrounding Trump.

Best Documentary Feature winner David Borenstein, for instance, implied a parallel between his film — an exploration of authoritarianism in Russia — and what is currently happening in the US.

“Mr Nobody against Putin is about how you lose your country,” Borenstein explained.

“What we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small little acts of complicity: when we act complicit, when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything, when oligarchs take over the media.”

Political speeches avoid mention of Iran war

The Oscars come roughly seven months ahead of the pivotal midterm elections in the US, which could see Trump’s Republican Party lose its majorities in Congress.

But while several filmmakers did hint at their anti-Trump stances, few explicitly denounced his policies.

For example, Norway’s Joaquim Trier, the winner of the Best International Feature category, veiled his criticism in a James Baldwin quote about the duty to protect children.

“Let’s not vote for politicians who don’t take this seriously into account,” Trier said.

No artist during the night referenced the US and Israeli war against Iran either, though its effects were felt among the participants of this year’s Oscar crop.

Writer-director Jafar Panahi, whose work was up for two Oscars on Sunday, has already said he plans to return to his native Iran after the awards season concludes.

Meanwhile, Iranian politician Sara Shahverdi — the subject of a nominee in the Best Documentary Short category — was prevented from attending the Oscars at all due to Trump’s ban on visas for 39 countries.

Palestinian actor Motaz Malhees, star of the Oscar nominee The Voice of Hind Rajab, likewise told media outlets he could not be present at the ceremony due to the travel ban.

The most pointed acknowledgements of the US-led and US-backed conflicts in the world were brief. When Spanish actor Javier Barden took the Oscar stage to present an award, he offered up six words, “No to war, and free Palestine!”

Russian filmmaker Pavel Talankin, meanwhile, made a similar appeal to the audience. “In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now,” he said.

But by and large, the Oscar winners and presenters kept their remarks vague, emphasising global unity over political criticism.

“If I can be serious for just a moment, everyone watching right now around the world is all too aware that these are very chaotic, frightening times,” O’Brien told the audience at the outset of the night.

“It is at moments like these that I believe that the Oscars are particularly resonant. Check it out. Thirty-one countries across six continents are represented this evening, and every film we salute is the product of thousands of people speaking different languages.”

Cinema, he and others argued, transcended borders. The talent on stage was not the US’s alone.