IDA

Guardian:

Ida emerged as a strong awards contender after winning the best film award at the London film festival in 2013. It has since battled with Leviathan at all the major awards ceremonies since, winning the Bafta for best foreign film and best film at the European film awards, but losing out at the Golden Globes.

NY Times:

Nine times Polish films have been nominated for best foreign language film — including works by such seminal filmmakers as Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda — but none have won until Sunday night’s award for “Ida,” a black-and-white drama set in 1962 Poland about an 18-year-old novitiate who discovers she is Jewish and has an aunt who is a prosecutor.

New Yorker Magazine:

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Leviathan” is a bravely confrontational drama of arrogance and corruption emanating from the Russian government, encompassing the Orthodox Church and poisoning the people; it’s a frank and honorable film, not especially original in its artistry, not as immediately visually and tonally distinctive as “Ida” is. I think that the superficially eye-catching quality of the latter film, along with its rather conventional ambiguities, will prevail.

Vulture: 

Award shows are notorious for drowning out winners with send-off music when they'd like them to leave the stage. Well, Ida director Pawel Pawlikowski was not having it at this year's Oscars. Here he is showing the Academy who's boss with a heartwarming speech that actually managed to shut up the orchestra.

Mashable:

Polish-British filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film Sunday night and decided he doesn't give a damn about the Academy's intrusive wrap-it-off music. Despite acknowledging that the music was cuing him off, he kept talking, even bringing up his late wife and parents as the music ended.