Oscars 2026: Alexandre Singh ‘Franco-Indian Brit’ wins Oscar with partner – other highlights
Highlights…more pictures to follow (after 5pm GMT)
🎥 Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata shared Live Action Short award with ‘The Singers’ for their film, ‘Two People Exchanging Saliva’
🎥 First ever Woman Cinematographer win – Autumn Durald Arkapaw for ‘Sinners’
🎥 ‘Sinners’ won four Oscars in all
Best Actor – Michael B Jordan
Best Original Screenplay – Ryan Coogler
Best Original Score – Ludwig Goransson
🎥 ‘KPop Demon Hunter’, won best original song for ‘Golden’ and took home Best Animated Feature, producer Maggie Kang said it was a longtime coming for Korean animation and said: “This is for Korea and for Koreans everywhere”
🎥 Priyanka Chopra Jonas & Javier Bardem present Oscar to Joachim Trier for Best International Feature for ‘Sentimental Value’
🎥 Kumail Nanjiani hands Singh and Musteata award along with filmmakers Jack Piatt and Sam A Davis (‘The Singers’)
🎥 US director Geeta Gandbhir misses out in two categories – Documentary – went to ‘Mr Nobody Against Putin‘ and not ‘The Perfect Neighbor‘; in the Short documentary category, ‘All The Empty Rooms‘, not ‘The Devil is Busy‘
🎥 See winners press conference Alexandre Singh and Natalie Mustaeta below
🎥 See the link to the film ‘Two People Exchanging Saliva’ below
🎥 More pictures to follow…
ARTIST ALEXANDRE SINGH has been thrust into the limelight following his Oscars win for ‘Two People Exchanging Saliva’.
He described himself, on stage accepting the award, as a Franco-Indian Brit.
This 37-minute long (films under 40 are classified as such) is a French language film directed and written with his partner, Natalie Musteata.
Shot in black and white, it depicts a world where kissing is forbidden and punishable by death. Folks pay for stuff by receiving slaps to the face and two women, Angine (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and Malaise (Luana Bajrami) start to fall for each other, when one shops compulsively in a luxury department store in Paris and comes upon the other working there. They grow attached. www.asianculturevulture.com has not seen the film, which was distributed in the US last year by The New Yorker.
In the winners’ press conference the couple talked about how the film had started to gain traction following a review by pop star Charli XCX on the social media film networking app Letterboxd.
Singh recounted: “I leapt off my couch when she reviewed our film. It was the most magical part of this process aside from working with Vicky Krieps, Isabelle Huppert and Julianne Moore.”
Singh said he was inspired by something said by director Guillermo del Toro (whose ‘Frankenstein’ won three Oscars on the night): “He was talking about cinema the other day and he said that making a film is building a world and an emotion – two things together.”
Musteata said that they had no expectations when they started out and certainly no idea that they would be winning an Oscar.
“I think we just made something very sincerely. We never imagined we would be here today. It’s as Roger Ebert (late legendary US critic) said film is ‘a machine for creating empathy’. We just really love the medium of cinema”.
She explained that her and Alexandre worked on the film and built a family of creatives around it and that “they didn’t want to shave off the edges of our ideas and I think that’s why all these actresses were attracted to it”.
Singh added: “I would also say never underestimate the power of just asking – you’d be really surprised – more people are likely to say yes…”
On stage, Singh said: “Thank you so much for having rewarded a French film made by a Franco-Indian Brit, a Romanian American, an Argentinian, an Italian with actresses Aurélie Boquien, Vicky Krieps from Luxembourg, Luana Bajrami from Kosovo, and Zar Amir from Iran, who cannot be here tonight. She just had a baby girl two days ago, Neela.”
Partner Musteata acknowledged sharing the award with ‘The Singers’ filmmakers and noted that it had only happened three times before. She saluted Galerie Lafayette, where the film was shot and the New Yorker (for distributing). She thanked executive producers – Julianne Moore and Isabelle Huppert and “our little girl, Sophie Singh”.
She ended her first address: “Thank you to the Academy for supporting a film that is weird and that is queer and that is made by a majority of women!”
Singh ended his acceptance speech on stage: “You are the hope in a world that is dark, absurd, and ridiculous and horrifying. But that is why we make films, isn’t it? Because we believe that art can change people’s souls. Maybe it takes ten years’ time, but we can change society through art, through creativity, through theatre and ballet and also cinema.”
The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2024.
Both filmmakers come from a visual arts background and met while working on a project in 2012 and collaborated to make another shot, ‘The Appointment’ in 2019.
Singh was born in Bordeaux to Indian origin parents.
Winners Press Conference (The Academy)
