Canadian pride shone brightly during the 95th Academy Awards on Sunday night (March 12) as trophies were handed out to Canuck filmmakers Sarah Polley and Daniel Roher, Canadian-American actor Brendan Fraser, and Montreal makeup artist Adrien Morot.

Toronto writer-director Polley won Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking (Plan B Entertainment, Hear/Say Productions, Orion Pictures), beating out scribes behind Top Gun: Maverick, Living, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and All Quiet on the Western Front. It’s her first-ever Oscar but second nomination, after being named in the same category in 2008 for Away From Her.

The Ontario-shot Women Talking is based on the novel of the same name by Canadian author Miriam Toews and sees a group of Mennonite women deliberating on what to do after a series of sexual assaults in their community. It was also up for Best Picture, a category won by Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Polley told reporters backstage in the press room after her win that she’s “thrilled that this is a recognition that our whole film is getting.”

“It was an incredible collective experience, and even adapting the screenplay itself was a result of so many conversations with so many people who weren’t named as nominees tonight,” she said. “So this feels like it’s for this amazing collective group of people who really brought a lot of their own lived experience to this film.”

The screenplay “was an ever-evolving thing,” added Polley, who was named Playback‘s 2022 Director of the Year.

“A lot of actors came up with ideas, lot of crew members in the moment would bring their own lived experience into the room, and we would change the script based on it. So it was a very alive, active document that was constantly being collectively built.”

Toronto-based director Roher won Best Documentary Feature Film for Navalny alongside producers Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller and Shane Boris. The film probes the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is now in a gulag in Russia.

Navalny beat out Fire of Love, which included Ina Fichman of Montreal-based Intuitive Pictures as a producer, as well as All That Breathes, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and A House Made of Splinters.

“I want the world to remember that right now Alexei Navalny is languishing in prison. He is the only prisoner who is removed from the general prison population in the Russian penal system. He is in perpetual solitary confinement and the reason he is in such abhorrent conditions is because he is the number one oppositionist to this war in Russia,” Roher told reporters backstage after the win.

“He is the one guy who opposes Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine, and that’s why he is in solitary confinement. I want to make sure the world doesn’t forget about our guy. I want to make sure that Navalny gets out of prison one day, survives this ordeal. His wife and children want him back. Navalny should be freed. That’s what I want the world to remember tonight.”

Roher’s previous films include 2019’s Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, produced by White Pine Pictures. Peter Raymont, the prodco’s CEO and co-founder, tells Playback Daily that Roher is “courageous and wise.”

“He believes in using film to make the world a better place. Let’s hope the Oscar saves Navalny’s life. He is such a brave man,” says Raymont.

Meanwhile, Fraser won Best Actor in a Leading Role for The Whale, beating out Austin Butler for Elvis, Colin Farrell for The Banshees of Inisherin, Paul Mescal for Aftersun and Bill Nighy for Living.

The Whale also won Morot an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, which he shared with Judy Chin and Annemarie Bradley. They beat out teams behind All Quiet on the Western Front, The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Elvis.

The National Film Board of Canada’s The Flying Sailor, by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby, was nominated for Best Animated Short Film but lost out to The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy and Matthew Freud.

Other Canadians who were nominated but didn’t walk away with hardware included Toronto-raised director Domee Shi for Best Animated Feature for the Disney and Pixar film Turning Red; Waterloo, Ont.-raised Chris Williams in the same category for Netflix animated series The Sea Beast; and Kapuskasing, Ont.-born James Cameron for Best Picture on Avatar: The Way of Water.

Social media was flooded with kudos for the Canuck crop of contenders, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Canadian Heritage Pablo Rodriguez among those tweeting congratulations.

Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images