“At the end of the day, it took us 20 years to get on screen," she said. "The fact that it has been so wonderfully represented is very rewarding to us.”
O’Reilly also told us that overall she feels like it was a good year for movies.
"I am a little bit of a dork because I pay close attention to the cinematographic aspect of films and I think they did a good job representing filmmakers on that."
The FilmDayton board member branched off to talk about others nominated for awards at the Oscars.
"My dislike (of) '(The) Martian' cannot be stated strongly enough."
We asked O'Reilly to rate the Academy on a scale of 1-10 for properly representing films this year.
"7.5 is the rating," she said. "'The Martian' dragged me down, but I think this year had a good mix of studio pushed and independent films."
"I was also pleasantly surprised to see Bryan Cranston," O'Reilly said. "He is fantastic for everything. I also think everyone was pulling to have Mark Rylance be nominated, so it was good to see him nominated."
Other films O'Reilly mentioned she was excited to see were "The Big Short" and "Star Wars."
"I also liked to see the success of 'Mad Max' which is interesting for the overall scope of films," she said. "I think people would have had a lot of doubt about this early on."
"(The nominations) did a great job representing for our region of filmmakers," O'Reilly said. "I think it shows the kind of skillset of filmmakers we have here. Overall this was a great experience to have."
The 88th annual Academy Awards will air Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. on ABC. The Screen Actors Guild Awards will air Jan. 30 at 8 p.m. on TNT and TBS.
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