Political metaphors were the dark undercurrent in this year’s crop of Oscars, from Anora’s toxic masculinity to the revolutionary defiance of I’m Still Here

So, as Conan O’Brien pointed out, the Oscars went to a film about someone standing up to a Russian, and maybe recent events mean we have to probe its political metaphor even further. Sean Baker’s cacophonous, crazy non-love story Anora won four Academy Awards including best actress for that rather amazing and newly born star Mikey Madison, playing the tough, smart, beautiful New York lap dancer who gets a Vegas quickie marriage to the spoilt and pusillanimous son of a Russian oligarch and then has to stand up to his parents. Madison embodies Anora’s complex courage: not exactly romantic, not exactly in love, but certainly believing in the wedding contract, in her own status as a legally married woman and in the possibility of happiness which is no more remote for her than for anyone else. She is the thoroughly modern, thoroughly 21st-century version of Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, who thinks that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty. She is in an all-against-one contest against toxic masculinity, and her final scene is rather extraordinary: reclaiming the dignity and honesty of what she is doing for a living, against the bullying and bad faith of all the men in her life.

And yes, it is about an American who is wooed by a Russian, in whom she pathetically reposes her trust but who ultimately betrays her. Teasing out who is Trump and who is Putin in this scenario isn’t easy. Maybe Anora is the American Maga voter and her pampered and impetuous bridegroom is the Russified and compromised US president, a Trumputin who makes promises but is then himself brutally brought to heel by his owner. It’s an amazing win for this exhilarating and scintillating film, and what a career arc for the American indie auteur Baker.

How Anora swept the Oscars – and the complete list of winners

The red carpet and Oscars ceremony – in pictures

The best quotes of the night

Trump cutting off USAid reminds us how much power we surrender to those who fund our work. We need a new mindset

About 35 years ago, the radio news announced that the then president of Kenya, Daniel arap Moi, had broken diplomatic ties with Norway. The embassy, with about 100 foreign and a few local staff, had one week to clear out of the country.

I was one of a few staff there at the time who worked for the Norwegian development agency, Norad, and our jobs disappeared with that radio broadcast. An estimated $30m annual budget, largely targeted at the arid and semi-arid parts of Kenya, also disappeared. Obviously that did not matter much to Kenya’s leadership, who felt that the independence of the country and the ability for them to decide what was good for Kenya, was more important.

Trump cutting off USAid reminds us how much power we surrender to those who fund our work. We need a new mindset

About 35 years ago, the radio news announced that the then president of Kenya, Daniel arap Moi, had broken diplomatic ties with Norway. The embassy, with about 100 foreign and a few local staff, had one week to clear out of the country.

I was one of a few staff there at the time who worked for the Norwegian development agency, Norad, and our jobs disappeared with that radio broadcast. An estimated $30m annual budget, largely targeted at the arid and semi-arid parts of Kenya, also disappeared. Obviously that did not matter much to Kenya’s leadership, who felt that the independence of the country and the ability for them to decide what was good for Kenya, was more important.

Peter Blake, Jim Moir and more celebrate the late artist’s genius. Plus: Norma Percy’s masterly series on Israel and Palestine continues. Here’s what to watch this evening

10pm, BBC Four
The overlooked sole female co-founder of Britain’s pop art movement, Pauline Boty, who died at 28 in 1966, finally gets her story told in a documentary. Fans including the pop artist Peter Blake, the comedian Jim Moir (AKA Vic Reeves), the critic and curator Kate Bryan and the print designer (and Boty’s best friend) Natalie Gibson help to honour Boty’s legacy, alongside a showcase of her vibrant, feminist and politically incisive pieces, which were ahead of their time. Hollie Richardson

Global Times signals Beijing’s likely countermeasure after US president threatened a further 10% duty to come into force on Tuesday

China is preparing countermeasures against fresh US import tariffs that are set to take effect on Tuesday, China’s state-backed Global Times reported, with American agricultural exports likely to be targeted.

Donald Trump last week threatened China with an extra 10% duty, resulting in a cumulative 20% tariff, while accusing Beijing of not having done enough to halt the flow of fentanyl into America, something China said was tantamount to “blackmail”.

On election night, as the far right rose nationwide, Die Linke made crucial gains in the capital. But its supporters see the hard road ahead

Will democracy still prevail in the west in a decade? It was certainly a question weighing on the minds of the hundreds of Die Linke supporters crammed into a former film studio overlooking Berlin’s Tempelhof airport last weekend. They were gathered to listen to the results of Germany’s election – and their reactions were mixed. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) had just doubled its support in federal elections, securing a fifth of the vote, yet Die Linke came top in the capital, albeit with 21% of the vote. They cheered, hugged, kissed and cried.

We were in Neukölln, a diverse neighbourhood of south-eastern Berlin, and the triumphant candidate was Ferat Koçak, a charismatic Kurdish-German leftist. His grassroots campaign knocked on every door in the district – not unusual in the UK and US, but a novelty in Germany. “For several years, the left has been in a kind of shocked paralysis about what to do with the rising right,” explained 30-year-old activist Isabelle: grassroots campaigning, she believes, brought the left out of its bubble.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist