One Battle After Another wins top producer award before Oscars

LOS ANGELES - American film-maker Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was named best picture by Hollywood producers on Feb 28, continuing its awards season streak before the Oscars.

The Producers Guild Awards (PGA) win cements the film, about the rise of extremism in the United States, as a frontrunner for the top prizes at the Academy Awards, which cap off the Hollywood awards season.

Anderson’s film, which depicts the hunt for former far-left revolutionaries by a white supremacist, seems destined for the Best Picture Oscar, having already secured numerous awards.

Since early January, it has won top prizes from American film critics and Hollywood directors, and received the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.

“This is a tremendous honour, thank you very much,” Anderson said in his acceptance speech.

The 55-year-old director then addressed executives at Warner Bros, the prestigious studio that distributed the film and is about to be acquired by Paramount Skydance.

“Long may you wave, whatever the future holds. It is one battle after another,” he said.

The PGA are presented annually by the trade union, which has more than 8,000 members.

They are considered a reliable indicator for the Oscars, with winners going on to seal Best Picture at the Oscars many times.

13 Oscar nominations

One Battle After Another boasts an all-star cast.

American actor Leonardo DiCaprio plays an explosives expert involved in a far-left movement where he falls in love with a revolutionary firebrand played by American singer-actress Teyana Taylor.

But years later, a white supremacist soldier (Sean Penn) who previously hunted them resurfaces, forcing the former bomb expert to return to action to rescue his daughter, played by American actress Chase Infiniti.

In his quest, he crosses paths with a Zen-like karate master (Benicio Del Toro), who is delighted to help the former revolutionary.

Adapted from American author Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland (1990), the film depicts an irreconcilable America, torn apart by the political legacies of the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Power movement, where everything is resolved through violence.

Acclaimed for its ability to capture the contemporary fractures in the US, the film received 13 Oscar nominations, including one for each of its lead actors.

But that was fewer than its main Oscars rival, American film-maker Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which received 16 nominations.

The winners will be announced on March 15 at the 98th Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. AFP