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Academy Award Winners 2025
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 98th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2025.
In the Best Original Music category, the winner was Ludwig Göransson, who won the award for his score for Sinners, director Ryan Coogler’s historical horror-drama about a pair of brothers who return home to depression-era Mississippi to open a juke joint blues club, only to see it attacked by vampires and members of the local Ku Klux Klan. This is the third Oscar win for Göransson – he previously won for Black Panther in 2018, and for Oppenheimer in 2024. In the acceptance speech Göransson, said:
Wow. My dad bought his first blues album in Sweden, 1964. It was a John Lee Hooker album, and even though it was on the other side of the world from a place my dad had never been, and a place he could not relate to, the music was so powerful that it changed my dad’s life and he devoted his whole life to music, and when I was about seven years old, a little boy, he put a guitar in my arms and I loved the guitar and it became everything to me, and it was the guitar that opened a lot of doors for me, and it was the guitar that brought me over to the States, and it was the guitar that eventually led me to one of the greatest storytellers of our time, Ryan Coogler. Ryan, thank you for your vision, and making a movie that resonated with the whole world. Thank you.
The other nominees were: Joscelin Dent-Pooley (Jerskin Fendrix) for Bugonia, Alexandre Desplat for Frankenstein, Jonny Greenwood for One Battle After Another, and Max Richter for Hamnet.
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Eun-Jae Kim (“Ejae”), Mark Sonnenblick, Soon-Heon Jeong (“24”), Gyu-Kwak Joong, Yu-Han Lee, Hee-Dong Nam (“Ido”) and Teddy Park for “Golden” from K-Pop Demon Hunters.
The other nominees were Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner for “Train Dreams” from Train Dreams, Nicholas Pike for “Sweet Dreams of Joy” from Viva Verdi!, Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Göransson for “I Lied to You” from Sinners, and Diane Warren for “Dear Me” from Diane Warren: Relentless.
BAFTA Winners 2025
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) have announced the winners of the 79th British Academy Film Awards, honoring the best in film in 2025.
In the Best Original Music category, the winner was Ludwig Göransson, who won the award for his score for Sinners, director Ryan Coogler’s Deep South vampire horror film which, in addition to being a bloody thriller, also examines the origins of Black American music. Göransson was not at the ceremony to accept his award, which was accepted by Coogler instead He said:
“I am not Ludwig Göransson. He is much taller, much more good looking, and much more Swedish. He is also in a lot of pain for not being able to be here tonight, he is working on a small indie film for Dame Donna Langley and Sir Christopher Nolan, it’s called The Odyssey. I hope people show up to see it. He’s working away, and he sent me this text to read. The music of Sinners is unequivocally intertwined with the contributions of everyone else here tonight. Ryan, Zinzi, Sev, Hannah, Autumn, Ruth, Michael B, Miles, Delroy, Wunmi, Jack, Monique Champagne, Shunika Terry, Sian Richards, Mike Fontaine, Christopher Welker, Benny Burke, Brandon Proctor, Steve Boeddeker, Francine Maisler, and of course Warner Brothers. Shout out to Pam and Mike for believing in us. We all took the transcendent script written by the man reading these words as a gift. We all sought to share in the most joyful way possible. Thank you to the BAFTAs for recognizing our family of artists, creators, and the rest of the musicians who brought their personal truths to the music of Sinners. I share this with you all. Thank you. ”
The other nominees were Joscelin Dent-Pooley (Jerskin Fendrix) for Bugonia, Alexandre Desplat for Frankenstein, Jonny Greenwood for One Battle After Another, and Max Richter for Hamnet.
Golden Globe Winners 2025
The Golden Globe Foundation (GGF) has announced the winners of the 83rdd Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2025.
In the Best Original Score category composer Ludwig Göransson won the award for his incredibly authentic score for Sinners, director Ryan Coogler’s historical horror-drama about a pair of brothers who return home to depression-era Mississippi to open a juke joint blues club, only to see it attacked by vampires and members of the local Ku Klux Klan. This is the second Golden Globe win for Göransson – he previously won for Oppenheimer in 2024. In the acceptance speech Göransson, said:
“Wow wow. Thank you. I mean, first of all, Ryan Coogler, you wrote an incredible movie, directed an incredible movie about a guitar player, about a musician. I think everyone here and everyone in this industry is just… I feel we’re grateful to be living in a timeline with you in it right now. Thank you, Ryan. I also wanted to thank our producers Zinzi Evans, Sev Ohanian, and our executive music producer and my partner Serena Göransson, and also Raphael Saadiq for writing such an incredible song for this film, “I Lied To You.” I also just want to take a little moment to just thank our incredible cast that was amazing to work with. Miles Caton, he learned how to play a guitar in three and a half months, and that was not easy. What you saw there is live! I mean, he played with a slide, and that was amazing. Wunmi Mosaku, every time you were on screen you were just… the music was just coming to me, it was so inspiring. I was on set for almost three months for this film,and being there while Michael B. Jordan was playing two characters was weird… because it was so incredible to witness and your devotion to the craft and how incredible your performance was really made my job easy, so thank you. Thank you.”
The other nominees were Alexandre Desplat for Frankenstein, Jonny Greenwood for One Battle After Another, David Letellier (“Kangding Ray”) for Sirāt, Max Richter for Hamnet, and Hans Zimmer for F1.
Controversially, the organizers of the Golden Globes decided to present the Best Original Score award during a commercial break, and as such the presentation and Göransson speech was not shown during the television broadcast airing of the ceremony. This decision was heavily criticized by almost all members of the film music community. Talking to a reporter from Variety before the ceremony, nominee Hans Zimmer said:
“I think it’s a shame not to honor those people – my friends – who work so hard to become a voice. As a person who has been making films forever, everybody who works on a film works their utmost, doesn’t get any sleep, there are no weekends. I think the work should always be acknowledged. This year is a fantastic year for composers — don’t ignore them, you don’t have a movie without them.”
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Eun-Jae Kim (Ejae), Mark Sonnenblick, Joong-Gyu Kwak, Yu-Han Lee, Hee-Dong Nam (Ido), Jung-Hoon Seo (24), and Teddy Park for “Golden” from the smash hit animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters.
The other nominees were Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner for “Train Dreams” from Train Dreams; Miley Cyrus, Andrew Wyatt, Mark Ronson, and Simon Franglen for “Dream as One” from Avatar: Fire and Ash; Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Göransson for “I Lied to You” from Sinners; and Stephen Schwartz for “No Place Like Home” and “The Girl in the Bubble” both from Wicked: For Good
SINNERS – Ludwig Göransson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s a moment in Sinners, director Ryan Coogler’s outstanding new horror-drama, where the lead characters in the ‘juke joint’ are listening to live blues music, rich and authentic. As the crowd becomes entranced by the performances, overcome by the songs, something magical happens: slowly, almost imperceptibly, avatars representing the entire history of black American music emerge from within the massed dancers, ghosts of the past and foreshadowings of the future of what this music would eventually become over the span of multiple subsequent generations. There are tribal drummers and Zaouli dancers from Côte d’Ivoire, who brought their music and their traditions with them when they were forcibly removed from Africa as slaves, and which eventually became the work songs and ‘Negro spirituals’ of the plantations and the cotton fields. There is 1940s jazz, and 1950s rock and roll. There are 1980s breakdancers, 1990s DJs and rappers, and references to contemporary hip-hop and R&B. It’s a brilliant distillation of one of the major things that Coogler is trying to say with his film – that African music and Black music is at the core of so much of modern American culture, and that that history remains very much overlooked and under-appreciated by too much of the mainstream. Read more…
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