Kumail Nanjiani was not joking as he read the Oscar winners for best live action short film.
Yes, winners.
In a tie, an award was presented to both “The Singers” and “Two People Exchanging Saliva.”
“I’m not joking. It’s actually a tie,” Nanjiani said on Sunday. “So everyone calm down. We’re going to get through this.”
He said he would announce the first winner, who would come to the stage and accept the award before he would announce the next winner. (The tie was the seventh in Oscars history, and the first since 2013.)
First up: “The Singers.” In a speech, Sam A. Davis, the film’s director, said that he did not know a tie was possible, and that the short film was a story “about the power of music and art to bring us together in a moment when we live in an increasingly isolated world.”
Nanjiani then returned to the stage to announce the category’s other winner: “Two People Exchanging Saliva.” One of its directors, Natalie Musteata, gave an impassioned acceptance speech before the other, Alexandre Singh, went for the microphone. But the sound cut out and the cameras panned to the show’s host, Conan O’Brien, who had a look of amused befuddlement on his face.
Once Singh’s microphone was restored, he thanked the academy for rewarding a “French film by a Franco Indian Brit, a Romanian American, an Argentinian, an Italian,” with actresses from Luxembourg, Kosovo and Iran. He said that “in a world that is dark and absurd and ridiculous and horrifying,” art is a vehicle for change. And he even took a beat to emphasize that could be done “through theater and ballet” (Sorry, Timothée Chalamet).
“I just want to say congratulations to both winners,” O’Brien said. “You just ruined 22 million Oscar pools.”
Michaela Towfighi is a Times arts and culture reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early career journalists.
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